Congregational  Churches. 

Massachusetts. 

Berkshire  Conferences, 

1903 


Jonathan  Edwards 


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Jonathan  Edwards 


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Jonathan  Edwards. 


UNION  MEETING  OF  THE  BERKSHIRE  NORTH  AND 
SOUTH  CONFERENCES. 


Stockbridge,    Massachusetts, 

OCTOBER  FIFTH,    1903. 


ORATION 

BY 

JOHN  De  WITT, 

Professor  of  Church  History,  Princeton  Theological  Seminary . 


^AND  OTHER  ADDRESSES. 


Published  by  the  Berkshire  Conferences. 

1903. 


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Edwaiids  House  at  STocKBRinoE. 
Where  he  wrote  The  Freedom  of  the  Will. 


CONTENTS. 


iKTRODrCTIOX 

Rev.  Hejsry  Hopkins,  D.D.,  LL.  D., 

President   of  Williams   College. 
Address  of  WELCOiiE — ■ 

Rev.  Elbert  S.  Porter.  Pastor  of  the  Stockbridge  Church. 
The  Edwards  Family- 
Rev.  George  Wakeman  Andrews,  Ph.  D.,  Dalton. 
The  Modern  Note  in  Edwards — 

Rev.  I.  C.  Smart,  Pittsfield. 
The  Other  Side  of  Edwards —    ^ 

Rev.  X.  S.  Rowland,  D.D.,  Lee. 
Oration — Jonathan  Edwards — A  Study — 

Rev.  John  DeWitt,  D.D.,  LL.D., 

Prof,  of  Church  History  at  Princeton  Theological  Seminary. 
Edwards  at  Stockbridge — 

Rev.  William  Edwards   Park,  D.D.,  Gloversville,  N.  Y. 


KESENT  BUILDING  IN  THE  BACKGROUND  WAS  ERECTED  IN  1824. 


INTRODUCTION. 
By  Rev.  Henry  Hopkins,  D.D.,  LL.  D. 

It  is  not  in  the  Valley  of  Chamouni  but  from  Geneva, 
sixty  miles  away,  that  one  gains  the  truest  impression  of  the 
comparative  size  and  majesty  of  IMont  Blanc.  Against  the 
distant  horizon  the  soaring,  snowy  outlines  of  the  monarch 
of  mountains  are  plainly  seen  far  above  the  surrounding  peaks. 

Distance  is  likewise  necessary  for  a  just,  comparative 
estimate  of  men.  That  a  man  should  be  visible  above  the  hori- 
zon at  all  two  hundred  years  after  his  birth'  is  in  itself  a  sign 
of  greatness.  Certainly  the  fact  that  groups  of  thoughtful 
persons  should  gather  together  in  various  places  after  that 
lapse  of  time  for  the  study,  appreciation,  and  commemoration 
of  a  man  proves  his  pre-eminence.  No  one  today  of  any  school 
or  creed  can  doubt  the  intellectual  and  moral  greatness  or 
spiritual  elevation  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  nor  can  the  student 
of  religious  and  educational  development  in  our  country  doubt 
the  exceeding  beneficence  and  fruitfulness  of  the  movements 
in  the  world  of  thought  and  life  which  had  their  origin  in  him. 
It  is  worthy  of  note  also,  as  indicated  in  one  of  the  papers  of 


this  volume,  that  through  the  "unparalleled  group  of  his  dis- 
tinguished descendants",  as  well  as  by  his  own  dynamic  force 
of  thought  and  character,  he  has  greatly  blessed  the  world. 

That  some  of  his  theological  conclusions  are  utterly  ab- 
horrent to  the  intelligent  modern  mind  is  freely  acknowledged. 
The  most  conservative  Christian  opinion  of  today  has  revolt- 
ed from  them.  There  is  an  Edwardian  paradox.  He  elabor- 
ately, persistently,  and  eloquently  insists  upon  love  as  the  last 
end  in  creation ;  and  yet  he  taught  that  from  all  eternity  God 
had  foreordained  the  vast  majority  of  the  human  race  to 
eternal  suffering  for  his  own  glory.  He  had  the  yearning  love 
of  a  devoted  pastor  for  his  flock.  He  sought  to  reveal  the 
love  of  God  to  them ;  he  had  a  tender  care  for  the  children  and 
for  the  humble  and  the  ignorant,  as  for  the  Indians  in  his 
Stockbridge  parish,  and  yet  he  preached  and  believed  the  En- 
tield  Sermon. 

May  we  not  say  that  being  the  logician  that  he  was,  and 
the  courageous  and  honest  man  that  he  was,  with  the  premises 
from  which  he  started,  it  could  not  be  otherwise,  taking  only 
logic  for  his  guide?  Did  he  then  take  the  wrong  guide?  Of 
this  much  we  are  certain :  he  walked  with  firm  and  fearless 
steps  along  whatever  way  his  inexorable  logic  led  him.  But 
did  any  man  ever  discover  the  secret  of  the  heart  of  God  by 
reasoning?  With  faultless  and  magnificent  precision  he  laid 
out  the  path  for  his  feet,  and  then  unfalteringly  followed  it 
to  the  end.  He  had  the  courage  of  his  metaphysics,  and  so  it 
came  to  pass  that,  like  Dante,  whose  guide  was  a  sublime 
poetic  imagination,  he  trod  the  burning  marl  amid  lurid  fires, 
and  walked  in  Paradise.  He  made  a  survey  of  the  territory 
and  put  upon  his  chart,  to  be  handed  down  to  posterity,  an 
infinite  heaven  and  an  infinite  hell. 

But  may  we  not,  without  disrespect  to  his  genius,  ask: 
Can  any  man,  with  any  human  instrument,  triangulate  the  In- 
finite, or  can  any  man,  by  his  logic  and  his  dialectic,  find  out 
God  to  perfection?  Certainly  the  AAjonderful  and  almost  ec- 
static vision  of  God,  of  which  he  has  left  the  record,  did  not 
come  to  him  through  his  logical  faculty.  It  was  direct  vision. 
It  was  the  fulfillment  to  him  of  the  promise,  "Blessed  are  the 
pure  in  heart  for  they  shall  see  God."  It  was  perception  as 
direct  and  immediate  as  that  through  which  he  so  keenly  re- 
joiced in  the  beauties  of  earth  and  skv. 


Is  it  not  possible,  then,  that  the  service  of  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards to  this  generation  may  be,  in  part  at  least,  as  an  illus- 
tration of  the  futility  of  any  attempt,  even  by  the  strongest 
and  most  acute  intellect,  to  discover  and  define  a  fact  of  life, 
a  vital  relation,  by  the  process  of  formal  reasoning?  Religious 
truth  is  inseparable  from  life,  and  life  perpetually  eludes 
analysis.  This  wonderful  marksman  aimed  at  the  highest,  but 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  he  could  not  shoot  his  arrow 
into  the  sun.  It  is  no  discredit  to  this  peerless  reasoner  that 
he  could  not  accomplish  the  impossible.  It  still  remains  true, 
reversing  the  saying  of  Lord  Bacon,  that  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  can  be  entered  in  no  otherwise  than  the  Kingdom  of 
Nature,  in  the  spirit  of  a  little  child. 

The  exercises  at  the  Edwards  commemorative  services  at 
Stockbridge  on  the  fifth  of  October,  held  for  four  straight 
hours  the  undivided  interest  of  an  audience  that  filled  the  his- 
toric church  of  the  plain.  The  addresses  then  delivered,  which 
are  reproduced  in  this  volume,  are  of  permanent  value  as  dis- 
criminating interpretations  of  a  phenomenal  man,  and  as  a 
substantial  and  most  interesting  contribution  to  the  religious 
history  of  New  England. 


ADDRESS   OF   WELCOME. 


By.  Rev.  Elcert  S.  Porter. 


Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  once  remarked  that  St.  Annivers- 
ary is  the  patron  saint  of  New  England.  It  was,  I  think, 
Professor  George  P.  Fisher  who  said  that  Jonathan  Edwards 
,is  the  patron  saint  of  i\ew  England.  Your  presence  here  to- 
day tends  to  prove  the  truth  of  both  of  these  assertions. 

You  certainly  do  us  great  honor  in  gathering  in  our  quiet 
village,  when  you  might  have  chosen  for  this  union  meeting 
of  all  the  Congregational  clans  in  Berkshire  some  larger  ami 
more  bustling  center.  It  is  not,  however,  to  honor  us  or  our 
town  that  you  come,  but  to  remember  gratefully  that  man  of 
God  who  here  wrought  at  the  forge  of  truth,  striving  like 
Siegfried  in  the  forest  to  fashion  again  with  mighty  blows, 
his  broken  sword,  and  to  make  it  a  better  weapon  than  ever 
for  the  contest  with  error  and  evil.  The  size  of  a  place  is 
better  measured  by  the  magnitude  of  the  men  who  make  it, 


than  the  number  of  its  inhabitants,,  the  amount  of  its  product, 
or  the  riches  that  it  represents.  Chios,  Stratford,  Epworth,  East 
Windsor  and  Bethlehem  were  little  places,  but  I  have  never 
heard  that  the  men  born  there  were  small.  No  one  grudges 
to  Stockbridge  the  title  which  the  poet  gave  to  the  English 
auburn,  "Loveliest  Village  of  the  Plain;"  nor  I  suppose,  will 
any  dispute  the  fact  that  she  has  reared  up  illustrious  men  and 
women,  in  numbers  an-d  influence,  far  out  of  proportion  to  her 
modest  limits. 

Certainly  among  all  the  honored  names,  associated  with 
this  ancient  town,  patriots,  jurists,  judges,  divines,  philan- 
thropists, physicians  and  authors,  none  is  more  famous  or 
revered  than  that  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  He  was  a  student  of 
deep  things.  In  philosophy  an  idealist,  in  theology  a  deter- 
minist,  in  ethics  a  hedonist,  in  personal  religion  a_  mystic,  he 
found  in  communion  with  God,  in  the  reverent  study  of  His 
Word,  in  the  contemplation  of  his  works  and  in  an  earnest 
endeavor  to  make  the  lives  of  men  better  and  more  fit  for 
heaven,  the  solace,  joy  and  constant  employment  of  his  eager 
life. 

btockbridge  presented  to  him  superior  charms  to  the  calls 
that  came  to  him  to  labor  in  other  fields.  Here  among  the 
ever  lasting  hills,  he  found  refuge  from  the  strife  of  tongues, 
and  in  the  language  of  Eloly  Writ,  inscribed  upon  the  tablet 
erected  in  his  memory  at  Northampton,  "He  Walked  With 
God."  We  must  given  him  credit  for  good  judgment  in  choos- 
ing for  his  place  of  rest  and  residence,  the  lovely  hills  and 
valleys  of  Berkshire  in  preference  to  the  fertile  fields  of  Vir- 
ginia, or  the  noble  mountains  of  Scotland.  When,  too,  he 
was  summoned  to  what  appeared  to  his  advisers,  a  wider 
sphere  of  influence,  as  President  of  Princeton  college,  it  is 
small  wonder  that  the  usuallv  calm,  self-contained  man  of  gi- 
gantic intellect,  should  have  vielded  to  the  unbidden  influence 
of  the  feelings  which  he  could  not  control  as  he  covered  his 
face  with  his  hands  and  wept,  to  think  that  he  must  leave  be- 
hind this  dear  retreat,  these  glowing  forests,  the  quiet  studv, 
and  the  friends  who  had  bidden  him  welcome  and  who  were 
reluctant  to  say  to  him  "Farewell." 

Jonathan  Edwards'  judgment  has  been  re-affirmed  to  a 
surprising   extent    by    a   succeeding   age.      Evervone    is    now 


10 

agreed  that  he  was  right  in  his  demand  at  Northampton,  that 
an  earnest  purpose  and  a  moral  Hfe  should  characterize  those 
who  would  become  members  of  the  Christian  church. 

Dr.  George  Gordon,  speaking  of  his  theology,  apart  from 
his  anthropology,  has  declared  that  it  is  living,  powerful  and 
bound  to  become  a  new  and  profound  influence. 

His  judg^ient  that  the  heights,  the  lakes  and  streams  of 
Berkshire,  afford  a  good  place  in  which  to  rest,  to  meditate 
and  to  refresh  the  weary  spirit,  is  confirnled  by  the  constantly 
increasing  numlsers  of  those  who  seek  these  picturesque  scenes 
and  bracing  atmosphere,  rear  mansions  upon  the  hills,  or 
throng-  hospitable  caravanseries,  in  order  to  gain  here  health 
and  inspiration  for  labors  and  influence  to  be  exerted  in  wider 
fields. 

We  honor,  today  a  man  who  was  essentially  a  student. 
Every  moment  possible  was  given  to  research,  meditation  and 
composition.  Much  paper  was  requisite  for  him  to  inscribe 
his  thoughts.  But  that  commodity  was  scarce  and  high  in 
those  early  colonial  days.  Therefore,  he  utilized  every  scrap 
or  stray  piece  that  came  within  his  reach,  even  pasting  to- 
gether the  edges  of  newspapers,  and  from  them  forming  blank- 
books  in  which  to  write. 

As  if  in  response  to  this  need  of  the  man  of  mind,  there 
was  begun  about  a  hundred  years  ago  at  a  point  about  two 
miles  east  of  this  spot,  the  manufacture  of  waiting  paper. 
Clear  mountain  springs  furnished  an  abundant  supply  of  clear 
water  with  which  to  wash  the  rags  laboriously  pounded  by 
hand  into  pulp.  By  using  a  score  of  mortars,  a  hundred 
pounds  of  pulp  was  thus  produced  in  a  day. 

Careful  estimates  reveal  the  fact  that  at  present  in  a  single 
day  twenty-five  tons  of  writing  paper  and  ten  tons  of  other 
papers  are  produced  in  our  county— a  total  of  7,500  tons  of 
writing  and  3,000  tons  of  other  goods,  or  a  total  of  10,500  tons 
in  a  year.  If  Jonathan  Edwards  had  been  able  to  write  ten 
sheets  an  hour  for  ten  hours  a  day,  calculating  125  sheets  to 
the  pound  and  three  hundred  working-  days  per  annum  he 
would  have  had  in  the  writing-  paper  now  annually  produced 
in  Berkshire  enough  material  to  last  him  a  hundred  thousand 
vears. 


11 


No  doubt  the  billions  of  sheets  which  issue  from  our  val- 
leys are  put  to  excellent  uses,  in  furnishint^  materia!  foi  our 
national  currency  and  the  medium  for  correspondence  and 
literary  composition,  but  it  may  be  doubted  if  the  tons  of  finest 
paper  that  go  forth  to  counting"  rooms,  boudoirs,  studies  and 
universities  are  put  to  any  higher  uses  than  were  the  stray 
scraps  upon  which  Edwards  wrote  his  thoughts  of  God. 

In  the  name  of  this  ancient  church  of  which  he  was  the 
second  pastor,  I  have  the  privilege  of  welcoming  you  most 
heartily  to  a  share  in  the  two  hundredth  anniversary  of  the 
birth  of  a  man  to  whom  honor  is  due,  as  a  laborious  student, 
an  ingenious  meta-physician,  a  resolute  moralist,  a  mighty 
theologian,  a  devoted  missionary,  a  pioneer  in  modes  of 
thought  that  have  led  to  much  advance  in  knowledge,  a  faith- 
ful and  loving  husband  and  the  noble  ancestor  of  a  splendid 
race  of  descendants.  May  we  be  refreshed  by  our  fellowship 
and  strengthened  in  our  faith  through  our  meeting  here  today. 


Stockbridge  Congregational  Church. 


THE  EDWARDS  FAMILY. 
By  Rf.v.  G.  W.  Andrews. 

Professor  Allen  of  the  Episcopal  Theological  School  of 
Cambridge  in  his  biography  of  Jonathan  Edwards  says  of  him : 
"Among  the  great  names  in  America  of  the  last  century,  the 
only  other  name  which  competes  in  celebrity  with  his  own  is 
that  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  who  labored  for  this  world  as  as- 
siduously as  Edwards  for  another  world".  Robert  Hah,  who 
only  knew  him  by  his  books,  said  :  'T  regard  him 'as  the  great- 
est of  the  sons  of  men".  These  words  may  seem  extravagant 
to  those  who  only  know  of  the  man  through  some  of  his  ex- 
treme theological  views.  Yet  these  are  the  statements  of  men 
who  were  estimating  his  services  to  the  world  in  the  realm 
of  theology.  Great  as  these  services  were,  they  are  small 
when  compared  with  the  larger  service  he  has  rendered 
through  his  posterity. 

A  study  of  the  Edwards  family  reveals  the  great  value 
of  a  Christian  home  to  a  nation  and  to  the  world.  All  families 
into  which  children  have  come,  transmit  their  characteristics 
to  succeeding  generations.  But  righteousness  has  such  a  pe- 
culiarly energizing  property  that  it  is  perpetuated  longer  than 
unrighteousness.     The  sins  of  the  father  are  visited  upon  the 


13 

children  to  the  third  and  fourth  generation,  but  the  mercy  of 
God  passes  down  to  the  thousandth  generation.  The  Christian 
family  therefore,  being  based  upon  righteousness  and  recog- 
nizing its  need  and  seeking  to  be  controlled  by  it,  transmits 
a  larger  power  than  do  other  families. 

The  Protestant  Reformation,  among  other  valuable  ser- 
vices to  mankind,  bestowed  an  important  service  in  rescuing 
the  clergy  from  a  celibate  life  and  establishing  them  in  the 
home,  where  by  reason  of  better  opportunities  to  know  and 
practice  the  virtues  of  the  Christian  life,  they  could  not  only 
illustrate  the  teaching  which  they  preached,  but  they  could 
also  transmit  tendencies  to  righteous  living  and  vigorous 
thinking.  This  statement  finds  a  ready  proof  in  the  after  life 
of  the  large  majority  of  children  who  have  been  trained  in  the 
parsonages  of  this  and  other  Christian  countries.  No  one 
who  is  at  all  conversant  with  the  facts  now  cavils  at  ministers' 
sons  and  deacons'  daughters.  The  proportion  that  go  astray 
is  so  very  small  that  they  are  classed  as  the  rare  exceptions. 

The  statement  also  finds  a  most  convincing  proof  in  the 
history  of  the  Edwards  family.  Dr.  A.  ,E.  Winship  of  the 
Journal  of  Education  has  done  a  rare  service  in  his  mono- 
graph entitled  "J^^^es — Edwards",  in  which  he  makes  a  con- 
trast between  the  Jukes  tribe  and  the  Edwards  family.  Many 
of  the  facts  here  presented  are  gleaned  from  this  book.  No 
one  can  read  it  without  saying  that  the  parsonage  of  East 
Windsor,  Conn.,  has  been  a  blessing  to  this  nation. 

The  first  persons  to  dwell  in  that  parsonage  were  the  Rev. 
Timothy  Edwards,  a  grandson  of  William  Edwards,  one  of 
the  first  settlers  of  Hartford,  a  thrifty  man  of  Welsh  ancestry, 
and  his  wife  Esther  Stoddard.  The  strength  of  the  Cambrian 
Hills  was  imparted  to  the  character  of  Timothy  Edwards. 
Such  were  his  extraordinary  attainments  in  learning  that  Har- 
vard. College  bestowed  upon  him,  on  the  same  day,  the  rare 
honor  of  the  degrees  of  bachelor  of  arts  and  master  of  arts. 
Nor  was  his  wife  inferior  to  her  husband  in  ancestry,  intel- 
lectual vigor  or  Christian  life.  She  was  the  daughter  of  the 
Rev..  Solomon  Stoddard,  a  Harvard  graduate,  a  learned  man, 
well  versed  in  the  religious  controversies  of  his  day,  and  an 
independent  thinker.  She  is  described  as  "tall,  dignified  and 
commanding  in  appearance,  afifable  and  gentle  in  her  manner, 


14 

and  regarded  as  surpassing  her  husband  in  native  vigor  of  un- 
derstanding." 

To  this  man  and  his  wife,  so  well  born,  so  well  educated, 
and  so  full  of  Christian  virtues,  there  were  given  eleven  chil- 
dren, ten  daughters  and  one  son.  It  would  be  of  great  interest 
to  follow  the  career  of  all  the  children  and  estimate  their  influ- 
ence, but  we  must  confine  ourselves  to  one.  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards was  the  fifth  in  this  family.  His  training  at  home  un- 
der the  direction  of  his  parents  and  sisters  emphasizes  the 
value  of  the  feminine  influence  in  education,  and  inferentially 
throws  some  light  upon  the  problem  of  coeducation,  which  is 
sc  much  derided  at  present  by  some  of  our  modern  exponents 
of  pedagogics.  If  ever  a  lad  had  female  rivals  in  the  class 
room  that  lad  was  Jonathan,  and  so  far  as  we  can  determine 
he  was  none  the  worse  for  it,  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  his 
sisters  v:eire  hurt.  And  that  was  nearly  two  hundred  years 
ago.  However,  the  world  moves,  and  perhaps  today  the  mas- 
culine mind  is  more  susceptible  to  the  pernicious  influence  of 
femininity. 

This  lad  entered  Yale  College  at  twelve,  was  graduated 
in  due  season,  and  then  took  a  post-graduate  course.  At 
twenty-three,  he  became  associate-pastor  at  Northampton  with 
his  grandfather,  the  Rev.  Solomon  Stoddard.  A  year  later  he 
was  married  to  Sarah  Pierpont.  She  was  descended  from  the 
choicest  of  the  Pierpont  stock  in  England  and  America.  She 
was  the  daughter  of  one  of  the  principal  founders  and  pro- 
fessors of  Yale.  Her  great-great-grandfather  was  the  Rev. 
Thomas  Hooker,  first  pastor  of  the  church  at  Hartford,  who 
finds  a  place  in  a  series  of  volumes  on  "The  Makers  of  Amer- 
ica", with  the  names  of  John  Winthrop,  Alexander  Hamilton, 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  Robert  Morris.  She  was  to  the  "manor 
born"  in  culture  and  Christian  grace.  Her  husband's  descrip- 
tion of  her  when  she  was  but  thirteen  has  been  frequently 
quoted  and  is  worth  requoting.  "She  is  of  wonderful  sweet- 
ness, calmness,  and  universal  benevolence  of  mind.  She  will 
sometimes  go  about  from  place  to  place  singing  sweetlv ;  and 
seems  to  be  always  full  of  joy  and  pleasure ;  and  no  one  knows 
for  what."  George  Whitefield  wrote  in  his  diary  "that  he  some- 
times wondered  if  it  was  not  the  Lord's  will  that  he  should 
marry,  that  he  might  thereby  be  more  useful;  and  that  if  it 


,15 

was  the  Lord's  will  that  he  should  marry,  he  wished  to  be  rec- 
onciled thereto ;  but  he  did  hope  the  Lord  would  send  him  as  a 
wife  such  a  woman  as  Mrs.  Edwards,  whom  he  considered  the 
most  beautiful  and  noble  wife  for  a  Christian  minister  that  he 
had  ever  known." 

As  in  his  father's  family,  so  there  came  into  the  home  of 
Jonathan  Edwards  and  his  wife,  eleven  children.  It  is  of  the 
influence  of  these  children  and  their  descendants  that  we  are 
to  treat.  As  the  choice  of  a  life  partner  is  a  good  test  of  char- 
acter, the  husbands  of  the  daughters  may  properly  be  reckoned 
as  belonging  to  the  family.  Had  one  a  complete  record  of  all 
the  lineal  descendants,  he  could  safely  ignore  these  husbands 
in  the  general  treatment  of  the  family.  The  showing  would 
certainly  be  marvellous  enough.  There  is  no  need  to  ask  those 
who  do  not  have  the  Edwards  blood  to  add  lustre  to  the 
family. 

Among  the  chief  elements  of  national  development,  we  as- 
sign education  a  high  place.  Whatever  and  whoever  aids  in 
the  mental  training  of  the  young  are  important  factors  in  na- 
tional life.  Here  we  may  place  the  college,  the  school,  the  col- 
lege president  and  professor  and  the  school  teacher.  Now  it 
is  worthy  of  note  that  the  father  of  Jonathan  Edwards  was 
one  of  the  Connecticut  pastors  who  met  at  Branford  and 
brought  some  of  the  most  valuable  books  from  their  libraries 
and  placed  them  on  the  table  saying:  "I  give  these  books  for 
the  founding  of  a  college  in  this  colony."  This  was  the  begin- 
ning of  Yale  college,  an  institution  that  has  sent  over  20,000 
graduates  into  the  world.  The  son  of  a  founder  of  this  mag- 
nificent institution  of  learning,  and  the  husband  of  the  daugh- 
ter of  another  founder,  Jonathan  Edwards  through  his  de- 
scendants, has  contributed  three  presidents  to  Yale,  who  ad- 
ministered the  office  in  the  three  periods  when  Yale  made  her 
greatest  advances — Timothy  D  wight  1794- 18 17,  Theodore 
Dwight  Woolsey  1 846-1 871  and  the  later  Timothy  Dwight 
1 886- 1897.  The  first  of  these  is  called  one  of  "the  most  emi- 
nent Americans."  Of  the  second,  President  Hayes  once  said 
"that  he  was  greatly  perplexed  at  one  time  as  to  the  line  of 
public  policy  to  pursue  until  it  occurred  to  him  that  President 
Woolsey  was  the  one  American  on  whose  judgment  he  could 
rely,  and  after  he  had  consulted  him  his  course  was  clear  and 
his  action  wise." 


16 

In  the  days  before  a  college  president  became  a  business 
manager  of  a  great  corporation,  and  his  teaching  talent  had 
full  exercise,  the  influence  over  student  life  was  beyond  reck- 
oning. The  personal  influence  of  these  men,  like  that  of  Hop- 
kins of  Williams,  McCosh  of  Princeton,  Finney  of  Oberlin, 
and  Seelye  of  Amherst  was  one  of  the  great  assets  of  the  col- 
lege and  of  unspeakable  value  to  the  student  body. 

Nor  did  this  remarkable  family  confine  itself  to  Yale.  It 
gave  presidents  to  Princeton,  Union,  Hamilton,  Amherst,  The 
University  of  Tennessee,  Johns  Hopkins,  the  Columbia  Law 
School,  and  Andover  Theological  Seminary. 

The  college  professor  shares  with  the  head  of  the  institu- 
tion the  honors  of  its  success  and  contributes  to  it.  This  fam- 
ily had  sixty-five  worthy  occupants  of  professorial  chairs.  The 
academies  and  seminaries  have  contributed  to  the  college 
ranks,  and  there  have  been  several  of  this  family  who  have 
been  at  the  head  of  such  institutions.  Add  to  these  the  number 
who  have  been  teachers  in  different  kinds  of  schools.  Then 
again  add  the  money  which  they  have  given  for  the  support 
of  schools  and  colleges — one  member  alone  giving  a  quarter 
million  dollars  to  the  endowment  of  Yale — and  then  one  may 
get  a  fair  appreciation  of  the  services  of  this  family  to  the  edu- 
cation   of   the   nation. 

The  press  occupies  an  important  place  among  the  insti- 
tutions which  have  contributed  to  our  national  greatness.  One 
may  very  well  be  given  to  flights  of  rhetoric  when  speaking  of 
the  influence  of  the  press,  and  he  will  probably  not  soar  much 
beyond  the  simple  truth.  The  printed  page  whether  in  the 
form  of  newspaper,  magazine  or  book  of  fact  or  fiction,  has 
been  everywhere  present  and  like  the  poor  is  ever  with  us.  Ed- 
itors and  authors,  obscure  and  eminent,  even  the  ubiquitous 
reporter,  have  guided  public  opinion  and  stimulated  human 
thought.  To  have  worthily  contributed  to  the  ranks  of  the 
members  of  the  press  is  one  of  the  honors  that  have  fallen  to 
this  family.  More  than  sixty  of  its  members  have  been  prom- 
inent in  authorship  or  editorial  life.  Dr.  Winship  says:  "I 
have  found  135  books  of  merit  written  by  the  family,  and 
eighteen  considerable  journals  edited  by  them, — several  im- 
portant ones  were  founded  by  them."  Among  the  papers  ed- 
ited may  be  mentioned  "The   New  York  Daily  Advertiser," 


17 

''The  Interior,"  Chicago,  "The  Hartford  Courant."  Among 
the  books  written  are  "The  Conquest  of  Canada,"  "The  Span- 
ish Conquest  of  America,"  "Greece  and  Roman  Mythology," 
"History  of  Virginia,"  "Five  Years  in  an  English  University," 
and  Kichard  Carvel."  These  are  not  the  most  important, 
but  they  represent  the  type  of  authorship  outside  the  purely 
theological. 

There  are  those  who  are  inclined  to  rate  the  legal  mind 
as  the  highest  type.  Others  may  not  fully  agree  with  them. 
But  no  one  will  dispute  that  it  requires  a  very  clear  intellect 
to  deal  with  matters  of  jurisprudence.  That  there  have  been 
those  in  this  family  who-  possessed  this  clear  intellect  is  shown 
by  the  legal  eminence  of  some  of  them.  Professor  Brice  placed 
one  of  them.  Prof.  Theodore  William  Dwight,  at  the  head  of 
legal  learning  in  the  United  States,  and  said :  "It  would  be 
worth  an  English  student's  while  to  cross  the  Atlantic  to  at- 
tend his  course."  He  was  called  by  another  English  writer 
"the  greatest  living  American  teacher  of  law."  Prof.  Dwight 
was  the  legal  editor  of  Johnson's  Encyclopedia. 

The  list  of  lawyers  among  them  is  amazingly  long.  Per- 
haps it  is  this  quality  of  mind  that  has  led  so  many  of  them 
into  public  life.  Two  of  them  were  members  of  the  Conti- 
nental Congress,  one  a  member  of  the  Convention  that  framed 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  several  were  members 
of  conventions  that  framed  constitutions  for  the  several  states, 
three  were  United  States  Senators,  several  were  members  of 
the  National  House  of  Representatives,  one  a  Vice-President  of 
the  United  States  who  barely  lost  an  election  as  President.  He 
is  said  to  be  the  only  one  for  whom  the  family  had  cause  to 
blush.  I  refer  to  Aaron  Burr,  the  grandson  of  Jonathan  Ed- 
wards. One  of  them  in  the  person  of  Mrs.  Roosevelt  has  en- 
tered the  White  House  as  its  mistress.  Others  have  been 
mayors  of  cities,  members  of  state  legislatures,  Governors  of 
such  states  as  Ohio,  Connecticut,  South  Carolina.  From  the 
time  of  the  Revolution  to  the  Civil  War  they  have  furnished 
brave  soldiers  who  have  sustained  the  honor  of  the  nation. 

The  health  of  the  people  who  form  a  nation  must  be  con- 
sidered when  forecasting  its  future.  The  man  who  aids  in 
preserving  health  and  in  breaking  the  power  of  disease  is  a 
public  benefactor.     Such  is  the  skillful  physician.     The  Ed- 


18 

wards  family  has  been  strikingly  long  lived  and  vigorous.  In 
this  way  they  hav»  added  to  the  strength  of  the  nation.  But 
they  have  done  more  than  this.  Sixty  of  its  members  have 
been  physicians  of  more  than  ordinary  skill.  Who  will  esti- 
mate the  amount  of  suffering  that  has  been  relieved,  the  num- 
ber of  hearts  tliat  have  been  made  glad  through  their  minis- 
trations? They  have  tenderly  cared  for  the  insane,  have 
soothed  the  fevered  brow,  have  wrought  wonders  through  sur- 
gery. Like  the  Great  Physician,  they  have  gone  about  doing 
good. 

When  we  ask  what  were  their  contributions  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  the  queen  of  all  institutions,  we  are  overwhelmed 
with  the  answers.  The  life-blood,  the  clear  intellect,  the  calm 
and  steadfast  trust  in  God,  the  gracious  sweetness  of  character 
and  confident  belief  in  the  supremacy  of  righteousness  have 
been  the  Edwards  gift  to  many  denominations.  The  family 
has  given  to  the  churches  some  of  the  most  eminent  names 
on  the  ecclesiastical  roll.  More  than  a  hundred  clergymen  are 
in  their  ranks.  It  has  given  professors  to  schools  of  theology. 
It  has  sent  missionaries  to  successful  work  in  Asia  Minor, 
India,  Africa,  China,  Hawaii  and  the  South  Sea  Islands.  Truly 
it  may  be  said  that  their  line  has  gone  out  in  all  parts  of  the 
earth.  The  family  has  had  a  genius  for  religion  and  this 
genius  has  been  put  to  magnificent  service  in  the  Kingdom  of 
God. 

We  might  well  pause  here.  But  there  is  much  more  to  be 
said.  The  Edwards  mind  is  versatile.  It  adapts  itself  to  all 
conditions  of  life.  Therefore  we  find  its  members  at  the  head 
of  great  industries,  directing  financial  institutions,  managing 
mines,  controlling  corporations.  It  is  said  that  fifteen  Amer- 
ican systems  of  railway  have  had  as  president,  superintendent, 
or  otherwise  active  in  the  management,  one  of  the  family. 
The  wealth  that  has  come  to  some  of  the  members  has  swelled 
the  great  stream  of  benevolence  and  made  the  world  happier. 
Such  a  family  as  this  is  the  nation's  strength.  We  may  well 
pray  that  it  be  duplicated  a  thousand  fold.  It  is  an  ideal  to 
which  other  families  may  aspire  but  to  which  none  can  attain 
except  by  the  same  God-consciousness,  spirituality  and  belief 
in  the  ultimate  supremacy  of  virtue  which  were  so  notable 
characteristics  of  Jonathan  Edwards. 


% 


^ 


irlAli-^ 


i^A 


THE  MODERN  NOTE  IN  EDWARDS. 
By  Rev.   I.  Chipman   Smart. 

Modern  notes  one  might  almost  say,  for  there  is  a  whole 
gamut  of  them,  but  if  I  should  try  to  sound  them  all,  with 
such  a  program  as  this  ahead  of  us,  I  should  deserve  to  become 
a  proof  text  for  Edwards'  sermon  on  "Wicked  Men  Useful 
in  Their  Destruction  Only."  I  shall  try  to  avoid  such  a  fate 
by  respecting  a  saying  of  the  wise,  "Truth  is  the  most  valuable 
thing  we  have,  therefore  let  us  economize  it." 

Edwards  had  a  reasoned,  sure,  warm  feeling  that  God 
comes  straight  to  men  and  illumines  their  minds,  straight  as  a 
sunbeam  comes  to  the  eye.     Tennyson  had  the  same  feeling. 

"Speak  to  him,  thou,  for  he  hears. 
And  spirit  with  spirit  can  meet ; 
Closer  is  he  than  breathing, 

And  nearer  than  hands  and  feet." 


A  sermon  of  Edwards  on  the  Reality  of  Spiritual  Light 
expresses  that  feeling.  The  sermon  might  be  preached  this  af- 
ternoon, and  with  all  our  theological  dialects  we  should  hear, 


20 

every  man  in  his  own  tong-ue,  the  wonderful  works  of  God. 
1  take  one  paragraph  from  the  sermon:  "Men  have  a  great 
deal  of  pleasure  in  human  knowledge,  in  studies  of  natural 
things,  but  this  is  nothing  to  that  joy  which  arises  from  this 
Divine  light  shining  into  the  soul.  This  light  gives  a  view  of 
those  things  that  are  immensely  the  most  exquisitely  beautiful, 
and  capable  of  delighting  the  eye  of  the  understanding.  This 
spiritual  light  is  the  dawning  of  the  light  of  glory  in  the 
heart.  There  is  nothing  so  powerful  as  this  to  support  per- 
sons in  affliction,  and  to  give  the  mind  peace  and  brightness  in 
this  stormy  and  dark  world." 

The  feeling  that  God  comes  straight  to  the  mind  is  a  cur- 
rent that  runs  far  and  deep  and  wide  through  the  serious  life 
of  our  day,  and  it  is  a  healing  stream.  Men  lose  leprosies  in 
it — leprosies  of  doubt — doubt  arising  because  God  has  been 
shown  to  them  as  an  idol  in  a  cage,  a  cage  of  Bibliolatry,  a  cage 
of  mediaeval  superstition.  A  dash  of  the  healing  stream 
clears  men's  eyes  of  dust ;  a  drink  of  it  washes  the  dust  from 
their  throats.  Life  is  magnificent  now,  just  that,  a  time  of 
great  doing,  but  it  raises  a  dust.  Some  people  call  the  dust 
materialism,  some  commercialism,  some  worldliness,  some 
ostentation ;  it  has  many  names.  The  magnificence  is  greater 
if  you  can  get  rid  of  the  dust. 

The  feeling  that  God  comes  straight  to  the  mind  is  dan- 
gerous. Even  when  it  is  justified  by  real  experience,  it  is  often 
overwhelming.  It  may  make  a  man  awkward  and  absent  and 
careless  in  some  common  matters  where  we  are  bound  by 
chains  of  reason  and  morality  to  this  world,  but  the  feeling  in  a 
prophet  who  has  seen  no  vision,  the  feeling  snatched  by  the 
shallow  who  confidently  misunderstand  and  misrepresent  and 
caricature  it,  is  a  pestilence.  It  was  in  Edwards'  day.  It  leads 
to  pride,  to  extravagance,  to  insanity,  to  silliness — silliness 
giddily  sporting  in  the  ground-up  dust  and  cinders  of  the 
world's  burned-out  and  refuse  superstitions,  like  the  eddying 
whirlwinds  in  the  wake  of  a  flying  train.  And  yet  the  feeling  is 
good.  The  truth  in  it  is  too  great  to  be  left  alone  in  the 
mind.  Nothing  can  keep  it  in  its  place  and  proportion  but 
another  great  truth  demanding  equal  room  a,nd  sway.  The 
possibility  is  easy  in  many  directions  that  there  may  be  too 
much  of  a  good  thing.     If  the  air  were  all  oxygen  we  should 


21 

die.  If  the  air  were  all  hydrogen  we  should  die.  But  since 
it  is  both  oxygen  and  hydrogen  it  is  breath  of  life.  The  feel- 
ing that  God  comes  straight  to  our  minds  needs  to  be  bal- 
anced by  the  feeling  that  He  comes  straight  to  other  minds, 
that  He  has  been  coming  for  ages  and  will  come  when  we 
have  gone.  The  feeling  needs  to  be  balanced  also  by  the 
trudging  moralities  of  common  sense  and  gentlemanly  con- 
sideration and  even  by  some  very  homely  gravel  in  the  shoe 
when  one  steps. 

Of  course  this  feeling  that  God  comes  straight  to  the 
mind  is  not  modern  only.  It  is  not  Edwardian  only.  It  is  as 
old  as  the  noonday  meeting  at  the  door  of  Abraham's  tent. 
You  feel  great  throbs  of  it  in  St,  Paul.  St.  John  beats  with 
almost  nothing  else  in  the  rythmic  music  of  his  heart.  It 
shakes  Augustine  at  his  mother's  death  bed.  It  smites  the  nail 
prints  into  St.  Francis'  hands.  Cromwell,  the  man  of  iron, 
melts  under  it.  It  ravishes  the  soul  of  Edwards  in  the  loneli- 
ness of  the  forest.  A  Harvard  professor  of  psychology  not 
long  ago  confessed  to  Scotchmen  that  he  had  had  twinges  of 
the  feeling  himself.  And  John  Fiske — how  far  is  it  from 
Jonathan  Edwards  to  John  Fiske^ — has  any  one  a  string  in  his 
pocket?  Thank  you,  but  I  see  we  should  need  a  rope  factory 
and  there  is  no  time.  And  yet  in  some  ways,  I  think,  that 
Fiske  goes  with  Edwards.  He  blew  a  blast  on  the  trumpet 
which  Edwards  set  to  his  lips.  When  we  call  Edwards  great, 
when  we  call  any  man  great  who  thinks  about  personal  life, 
do  we  not  mean  that  he  takes  up  a  trumpet  about  which  the 
lips  of  men  are  always  busy,  sometimes  with  feeble  gurg- 
lings, sometimes  with  ringing  tones,  and  blows  a  blast  on  it 
at  which  both  the  ears  of  every  man  who  hears  it  tingle  as  if 
the  God  of  hosts  marched  in  with  the  sound. 

Ecstacy  is  not  necessary  to  this  feeling.  Whoever  is  aware 
of  a  wonderful  light  shining  in  his  mind  to  make  the  great 
truths,  the  great  meanings,  the  great  duties  of  life  stand  clear 
in  their  proper  beauty  and  strength  and  eternal  worth,  walks 
with  Edwards  on  the  height  where  one  may  lift  St.  Agnes' 
prayer  for  "a  heart  as  pure  and  clear  as  are  the  frosty  skies." 
I  do  not  assess  the  value  of  this  feeling.  I  do  not  pretend 
that  it  is  general.  I  only  call  attention  to  it  and  speak  my 
conviction  that  it  is  a  current  which  runs  far  and  deep  and 


22 

wide  in  the  serious  life  of  our  day,  and  that  on  the  whole,  in 
spite  of  some  hemlock  afloat  in  it,  it  is  a  healing  stream. 

I  have  a  friend  who,  when  I  ask  him  how  he  does,  replies : 
''Pretty  well,  considerin_g."  Edwards  was  one  of  those  men, 
plenty  now  as  drops  in  a  shower,  nicknamed  idealists  who  will 
give  us  no  peace  but  keep  saying  that  "Pretty  well  consider- 
ing" is  a  perilous  state.  It  accommodates  itself  too  easily  to 
the  existing  situation.  It  is  simply  clever  politics.  It  is  sav- 
ing your  skin.  You  must  fight  the  existing  situation.  You 
must  hack  away  the  edges  of  circumstance  and  get  elbow 
room.  You  must  make  unattained  goodness  not  your  dream- 
land but  a  law  to  clutch  your  wills.  You  must  have  a  reach 
beyond  your  grasp,  you  must  seek  the  Holy  Grail,  you  must 
hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star.  If  you  believe  that  man  has  no 
second  life,  pitch  this  one  liigh,  or  as  Edwards  said,  you  must 
do  the  will  of  God.  "But  you  can't  do  the  will  of  God,"  he 
added.  No  man  can,  and  so  you  are  just  fuel  for  burning. 
God  here  and  there  snatches  out  a  brand ;  the  rest  go  up  in 
smoke. 

Once  when  the  sons  of  a  prophet  were  hungry,  they  set 
on  the  great  pot  and  boiled  pottage,  but  some  one  put  in  wild 
gourds  by  mistake,  and  as  they  were  eating,  they  came  to 
Elisha  and  said :  "Oh,  man  of  God !  there  is  death  in  the  pot." 
Elisha  threw  in  a  handful  of  meal,  and  there  was  no  harm  in 
the  pot.  But  when  there  was  death  in  Edwards'  pot,  he  said, 
"I  know  it  but  I  can't  help  it."  "It  will  have  to  stay."  And 
it  did.  Death  of  hope,  despair  of  human  nature,  and  tragical 
personal  despair.  There  is  always  death  in  the  idealist's  pot 
until  the  right  kind  of  meal  is  flung  into  it. 

Modern  thinking  and  modern  stories  abound  in  gloomy 
views  of  human  nature,  and  yet  the  ideal  of  manhood  was 
never  pitched  higher  than  it  is  today.  If  you  look  to  life  out- 
side of  books,  you  find  the  same  thing.  There  in  the  coal 
mines,  men  pursuing  an  end  which  glowed  before  them  as  a 
kind  of  Holy  Grail ;  but  some  of  them  turned  to  tigers  when 
they  saw  a  hand  threatening  to  snatch  the  cup  from  their  lips. 

You  know  what  Edwards'  despair  was.  The  moan  of  it 
is  on  all  the  shores  of  his  life  like  the  moaning  of  the  sea.  How 
like  a  horror  of  darkness  hell  gloomed  in  his  mind.  He  de- 
scribed it  with  a  kind  of  desperate  fascination.     You  feel  in 


23 

some  of  his  awfullest  passages  the  shuddering"  recoil  of  a 
splendid  mind  at  the  mouth  of  a  fiery  furnace,  but  since  the 
furnace  was  there,  he  strode  through  thoroughly  like  a  Puri- 
tan. 

llie  language  of  the  moral  idealist,  is  substantially  the 
language  of  Edtvards — Obey  God's  will  or  die  and  go  to  hell. 
But  you  can't  obey  God's  will.  Enter  despair.  Obey  your 
fine  ideal  or  lose  the  life  of  your  life  and  suffer  the  pains  of 
hell.  But  you  can't  obey  your  fine  ideal.  Enter  despair.  Cur- 
tain. Second  Act.  God  choosing  some  and  taking  them  with 
him  to  paradise.  But  we  can  match  that  too.  We  have  our 
doctrine  of  election.  Environment,  we  call  it,  and  it  is  arbi- 
trary like  election.  The  winds  which  carry  seeds  are  very 
arbitrary.  They  drop  some  in  green  pastures,  beside  still  wa- 
ters ;  they  drop  some  in  the  yellow  scurf  beside  a  dead  sea. 
Enter   more   despair. 

But  what  is  the  door  of  hope?  Edwards  opened  it  in  his 
sermon  on  Spiritual  Light,  but  he  neither  went  in  himself  nor 
suffered  those  who  were  entering  to  go  in.  He  even  slammed 
the  door  in  the  face  of  those  who  needed  it  most.  He  slammed 
it  in  one  small  sentence  where  he  distinguished  common  grace 
from  special  grace  as  if  God  were  a  kind  of  double  personal- 
ity, Mr.  So  So  and  Mr.  Very  Good  Edwards  left  all  but  the 
elect  to  the  care  of  Mr.  So  So.  If  he  had  dropped  that  mis- 
chievous distinction  and  believed  and  taught  that  one  God  for 
one  end  of  love  sends  His  one  spirit  into  the  minds  of  men  for 
every  good  service,  he  would  have  flung  wide  the  door  of  hope. 
Pie  did  not  need  to  darken  the  glory  of  God's  sovereign  will 
by  so  much  as  the  shadow  of  a  hair.  He  did  not  need  to  im- 
agine the  slightest  quaver  in  the  magnificent  call  of  God  to 
man.  All  he  needed  was  to  hear  in  that  call  deep  calling  unto 
deep.  All  he  needed  was  to  believe  and  teach  that  God  comes 
straight  to  the  mind  in  every  motion  of  duty  and  love  and 
comes  to  save,  and  then  his  beautiful  sermon  on  Spiritual  Light 
would  be  a  Gospel  for  the  da3^ 

I  started  out  to  pick  up  a  feather  from  an  eagle's  wing. 
If  I  keep  on,  I  shall  be  flapping  my  own  wings  and — you  are 
very  kind,  my  friends,  I  thank  you  for  thinking  so,  but  really 
thev  are  not  eagles'  wings,  and  I  fold  them. 


THE  OTHER   SIDE  OF  EDWARDS. 

Rev.  Lyman  S.  Rowland.  D.  D. 

There  are   sides  of   the   character  of  Jonathan  Edwards 
so  apparent  and  universallv  recognized  as  to  be  ahnost  beyond 
he  scope  of  fttrther  debate,-his  surpassing  greatness  n.  at 
east   two   directions-as   a   philosophic   theologian   and    as   a 
Saintly  Christian  man.     After  the  consentn.g  verdict  of  two 
centuries  to  his  eminence  on  these  sides  he  nnist  be  a  boW 
,nan  indeed  who  will  venture  to    cha  lenge    it    today.      If    the 
ludgment  of  men  like  Thomas   dialmers,  and  Robeit  Hall 
ind^Sir  Tames  Mackintosh,  and  Dugald  Stewart,  -d  George 
Bancroft,  and  Theodore  D.  Woolsey,  and  Edward  A.   Park 
and  George  P.  Fisher,  is  not  to  be  accepted  as  f\nal,  then  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  finality  of  judgment  with  regard  to  any 
human  greatness.     Ai^istotle  and  Plato  and  Kant  may  yet  be 
thrust    from    their    pedestals.     Paul's    epistles    and    Shakes- 
peare's plays  may  be  suffered  to  go  out  of  print  and  become 
lost  to  the  memory  of  men.  _ 

But  men  are  sometimes  the  victimes  of  their  own  great- 
ness.    Their  eminence  in  some  directions  leads  them  to  ques- 


25 

tion  or  oversight  of  it  in  other  directions.  The  first  impression 
naturally  from  the  sight  of  the  giant  redwoods  of  California 
is  that  of  altitude.  Their  magnitude  seems  to  be  of  one  dimen- 
sion only,  until  it  is  discovered  that  their  footing  on  the  ground 
is  proportionate  to  their  .upreach  toward  the  sky,  that  a  coach 
and  four  can  be  driven  through  their  excavated  trunks  and  a 
house  built  upon  their  stumps.  As  the  sequoia  among  the 
trees  of  the  wood,  so  is  our  Edwards  among  the  sons  of  men^ 
All  men  are  impressed  by  his  altitude,  but  in  the  minds  of 
many  it  is  height  at  the  expense  of  breadth;  a  great  theo- 
logian indeed,  but  a  narrow  one,  inclined  to  shut  the  gates 
of  mercy  on  mankind,  so  severe  and  even  cruel  in  his  opinions 
as  to  be  hardly  worth  the  serious  attention  of  men  in  this  en- 
lightened and  kindly  age.  That  such  is  a  very  general  opin- 
ion of  Edwards,  I  am  confident.  Said  a  gentleman  driving 
through  Stockbridge  with  a  clerical  friend  of  mine  some  time 
ago.  as  they  passed  the  Edwards'  monument,  "That's  the  man 
who  used  to  preach  that  hell  is  paved  with  infant  skulls." 
Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  in  one  of  his  occasional  poems  writ- 
ten in  his  later  years  speaks  of  Edwards  as  stamping  in 
Princeton  "his  iron  heel,"  and  his  long  prose  essay  on  Edwards 
is  in  much  the  same  vein.  Our  recent  and  current  literature 
abounds  in  such  utterances.  They  will  probably  be  heard 
from  scores  of  pulpits  and  platforms  in  connection  with  this 
anniversary. 

To  fully  set  forth  the  other  side  of  Edwards  would  re- 
quire a  volume.  INIy  limit  of  time  will  permit  only  a  few  il- 
lustrations, and  I  will  give  them  mainly  in  his  own  words.  It 
has  been  my  experience  in  the  reading  of  Edwards  to  dis- 
cover evidence  of  breadth  of  view  and  of  sympathy  in  unex- 
pected places.  Take  for  instance  the  conclusion  of  his  treatise 
on  Justification  by  Faith  Alone.  This  treatise  is  made  up  you 
know  of  sermons  preached  in  Northampton  at  the  opening 
of  the  great  revival  in  1734-5.  They  proved  indeed  the  first 
human  impulse  in  that  great  work,  being  followed  by  an  inter- 
est in  religion  that  speedily  pervaded  the  town  and  shook  it 
to  its  foundations.  It  would  seein  that  the  minds  of  the  peo- 
ple of  Northampton  must  have  been  differently  constituted 
from  those  of  the  rest  of  mankind,  certainly  from  ours  today, 
that  such  sermons,  so  searching  and  profound  in  their  analy- 


26 

sis  of  the  principles  of  Christian  faith,  often  so  minute  and 
abstract  in  their  reasoning",  should  have  had  such  an  eltect. 
Thev  seem  as  we  read  them  now  far  better  adapted  to  the 
thelogical  lecture  room  than  to  the  pulpit.  But  the  great  sur- 
prise is  in  the  final  paragraph.  We  should  have  expected,  ac- 
cording to  the  common  view  of  Edwards,  a  conclusion  that 
would  shut  up  men  to  the  acceptance  of  his  exact  views,  and 
that  would  reduce  the  way  of  faith  to  the  dimensions  of  a 
needle's  eve.  Instead  we  are  gratified  by  the  final  outlook  as 
broad  as  any  Christian  of  evangelical  faith  will  take  at  the 
present  time.  The  paragraph  is  a  typical  one  in  its  concaten- 
ated structure,  and  must  be  quoted  entire  if  at  all : 

"How  far  a  wonderful  and  mysterious  agency  of  God's 
Spirit  may  so  influence  some  men's  hearts,  that  their  practice 
in  this  regard  may  be  contrary  to  their  own  principles,  so  that 
they  shall  not  trust  in  their  own  righteousness,  though  they 
profess  that  men  are  justified  by  their  own  righteousness;  or 
how  far  they  believe  the  doctrine  of  justification  by  men's  own 
righteousness  in  general,  and  yet  not  believe  it  in  a  particu- 
lar application  of  it  to  themselves ;  or  how  far  that  error  which 
they  may  have  been  led  into  by  education  or  cunning  sophistry 
of  others,  may  yet  be  indeed  contrary  to  the  prevailing  dis- 
position of  their  hearts,  and  contrary  to  their  practice ;  or  how 
far  some  men  seem  to  maintain  a  doctrine  contrary  to  this  gos- 
pel doctrine  of  justification,  that  really  do  not,  but  only  ex- 
press themselves  dififerently  from  others ;  or  seem  to  oppose 
it  through  their  misunderstanding  of  our  expressions,  or  we 
of  theirs,  when  indeed  our  real  sentiments  are  the  same  in  the 
main  ;  or  may  seem  to  dififer  more  than  they  do  by  using  terms 
that  are  without  a  precisely  fixed  and  determinate  meaning ;  or 
to  be  wide  in  their  sentiments  from  this  doctrine  for  want  of 
a.  distinct  understanding  of  it,  whose  hearts  at  the  same  time 
entirely  agree  with  it,  and  if  it  were  clearly  explained  to  their 
understandings,  would  immedately  close  with  it,  and  embrace 
it : — how  far  these  things  may  be  I  will  not  determine ;  but  am 
fully  persuaded  that  great  allowances  are  to  be  made  on  these 
and  such  like  accounts  in  innumerable  instances ;  though  it  is 
manifest  from  what  has  been  said  that  the  teaching  and 
propagating  contrary  doctrines  and  schemes  are  'of  a  pernic- 
ious and  fatal  character." 


27 

1  submit,  my  brethren,  that  no  reasonable  Christian  mind 
can  demand  greater  breadth  of  appHcation  for  this  fundament- 
al doctrine  of  the  Gospel  than  this :  that  we  have  here  by  plain 
implication  if  not  in  full  expression  that  principle  of  essential 
and  unconscious  faith  as  distinguished  from  actual  faith  in 
which  we  take  refuge  from  so  many  of  our  doubts  and  diffi- 
culties in  this  time  of  religious  unrest. 

A  similar  gratifying  surprise  awaits  the  reader  in  the 
recognition  by  Edwards  of  the  possible  varieties  and  methods 
of  conversion  under  the  illumination  that  came  to  him  in  con- 
nection with  the  great  revival.  No  mind  was  ever  more  open 
to  the  convincing  influence  of  facts  than  was  that  of  Jonathan 
Edwards.  However  narrow  his  previous  views,  we  find  him 
in  his  Narrative  of  Surprising  Conversions  recognizing  as 
fully  as  any  modern  minister  or  evangelist  the  fact  that  there 
are  diversities  of  operations  while  it  is  the  same  God  that 
worketh  all  in  all.  He  returns  to  the  subject  again  and  again 
as  if  delighting  in  the  discovery.  One  illustration  must  stand 
for  many  equally  to  the  point : 

"There  is  an  endless  variety  in  the  particular  manner  and 
circumstances  in  which  persons  are  wrought  on,  and  an  op- 
portunity of  seeing  so  much  of  such  a  work  of  God,  will  show 
that  God  is  further  from  confining  himself  to  certain  steps, 
and  a  particular  method  in  his  work  on  souls,  than  it  may  be 
some  do  imagine.  I  believe  it  has  occasioned  some  good  peo- 
ple amongst  us,  that  were  before  ready  to  make  their  own 
experiences  a  rule  for  others,  to  be  less  censorious  and  more 
extensive  in  their  charity,  and  this  is  an  excellent  advantage 
indeed.  The  work  of  God  has  been  glorious  in  its  variety,  it 
has  more  displayed  the  manifoldness  and  unsearchableness  of 
the  wisdom  of  God  and  wrought  more  charity  among  his  peo- 
ple." 

He  learned  not  to  demand  from  converts  a  statement  of 
the  precise  time  of  their  conversion,  and  that  the  milder 
forms  of  experience  were  as  likely  to  be  followed  by  the  gen- 
uine fruits  of  the  Spirit  in  the  life  as  the  more  sudden  and 
convulsive.  He  came  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  the  conver- 
sion of  children,  of  very  young  children.  Indeed  his  attitude 
toward  children,  notwithstanding  the  severity  of  his  view  as 
to  their  inherited  depravity,  was  always  most  tender  and  af- 


28 

fectionate.  He  devotes  a  most  touching  paragraph  to  the 
lamhs  of  his  flock  in  his  farewell  sermon  to  the  church  in 
Northampton,  a  feature  I  believe  quite  unique  on  such  an  oc- 
casion, and  proving  conclusively  that  Edwards  was  as  far  as 
possible  from  being  the  Moloch  of  the  common  fancy. 

Edwards  has  been  supposed  to  set  up  an  almost  insuper- 
able barrier  to  Church  membership  in  his  Qualifications  for 
Communion.  He  was  greatly  misjudged  in  his  own  time  in 
this  respect  as  he  still  it.  He  is  supposed  to  put  his  treatise 
on  the  Religious  Afifections,  with  its  almost  impossible  ideal 
of  the  Christian  life,  at  the  portals  of  the  church  to  warn  off 
applicants  for  admission.  But  he  indignantly  repudiates  in 
his  reply  to  his  critics  such  an  aspersion  on  his  Christian  char- 
ity and  common  sense.  Instead  of  making  the  requirements 
as  high  and  diflicult  as  possible  he  would  make  them  as  easy 
as  possible  in  consistency  with  the  reality  of  the  Christian 
character.  What  he  did  insist  on  with  all  the  energy  of  his 
nature  was  the  fact  of  regenerate  character  as  a  qualification 
for  membership,  in  opposition  to  the  prevailing  view  under  the 
Half  Way  Covenant  that  all  that  should  be  required  was  re- 
spectability of  outward  conduct.  This  was  the  ground  of  his 
quarrel  with  his  church,  and  for  this  opinion  he  was  willing 
to  go  into  exile.  But  as  respects  the  formula  of  admission, — 
while  he  would  have  preferred  something  more, — he  would 
have  been  content  with  one  of  three  or  four  lines 
like  the  following:  '"l  hope  I  do  truly  find  a  heart  to  give  up 
myself  wholly  to  God  according  to  the  tenor  of  that  covenant 
of  grace  which  was  sealed  in  my  baptism ;  and  to  walk  in  a 
way  of  observaruce  to  all  the  commandments  of  God  which  the 
covenant  of  grace  requires  as  long  as  I  live," — hardly  more 
you  notice  than  is  now  required  for  the  admission  of  young 
people  to  a  Christian  Endeavor  Society.  While  he  thinks 
that  some  preliminary  examination  of  candidates  is  desirable 
he  would  make  that  also  as  simple  as  possible.  "Neither  min- 
ister nor  church,"  he  says,  "are  to  set  up  themselves  as  search- 
ers of  hearts,  but  are  to  accept  the  serious  and  solemn  pro- 
fession of  the  well  instructed  professor  of  a  good  life,  as  best 
able  to  determine  what  he  finds  in  his  own  heart."  Who 
can  ask  that  the  doors  of  the  Christian  church  should  be  opened 
wider  than  this?  It  seems  almost  a  dangerous  extreme  in  the 
liberal  direction. 


29 

Edwards  has  doubtless  suffered  in  the  judgment  of  men 
from  nothing-  so  much  as  from  what  have  been  called  his  "im- 
precatory sermons,'"  that  is,  his  sermons  on  the  wrath  of  God 
toward  sinners,  and  the  certain  and  terrible  retribution  await- 
ing them  in  the  future.  Imprecatory  is  hardly  too  strong  a 
term  to  apply  to  these  sermons.  They  are  simply  terrific  in 
their  presentation  of  the  severer  elements  of  Christian  truth. 
I  could  speedily  empty  this  church  by  quoting  characteristic 
passages.  I  suppose  the  impression  of  Edwards  in  multitudes 
of  minds  has  come  entirely  from  these  sermons.  It  is  un- 
fortunate for  his  reputation  that  they  form  so  large  a  part  in 
the  collections  that  have  come  down  to  us  in  his  printed 
volumes.  They  were  preached,  the  most  of  them,  during  the 
great  revival,  and  were  preserved  I  suppose,  as  a  part  of  the 
history  of  that  remarkable  movement.  .Much  might  be  said 
in  mitigation  of  judgment.  Edwards  himself  defends  them 
against  his  critics,  and  on  his  own  ground  it  is  difficult  to 
answer  him. 

But  my  object  is  not  defense  or  excuse.  Let  them  stand 
just  as  we  find  them  like  the  mount  that  might  be  touched 
and  that  burned  with  fire,  and  at  the  sight  of  which  Moses  said, 
"I  exceedingly  fear  and  quake."  What  I  claim  is  that  there  is 
another  side  to  the  preaching  of  Jonathan  Edwards,  a  Calvary 
as  well  as  a  Sinai,  a  Paradise  as  well  as  an  Inferno.  He  makes 
much  of  heaven  and  its  unspeakable  felicities.  He  has  a  most 
remarkable  sermon  on  the  Excellency  of  Christ ;  one  on  Spir- 
itual Light,  as  beautiful  and  suggestive  as  is  to  be  found  in 
the  language ;  one  on  the  Peace  which  Christ  gives  His  True 
Followers ;  one  on  God  the  Best  Portion  of  the  Christian ; 
one  on  the  Sorrows  of  the  Bereaved  spread  before  Jesus. 
Most  of  his  treatises  are  made  up  of  sermons.  Among  those 
still  in  manuscript  we  are  told  there  is  a  series  on  the  Beauti- 
tudes.  He  was  not  always  preaching  in  the  line  of  the  im- 
precatory sermons.  They  probably  were  a  small  fraction  of 
the  multitude  covering  the  whole  field  of  Christian  truth, 
preached  by  him  during  the  twenty-three  years  of  his  North- 
ampton pastorate.  He  believed  in  what  he  called  "afifectionate 
appeal",  and  was  hardly  less  powerful  in  that  direction  than 
in  its  opposite.  Everybody  has  heard  of  his  Enfield  sermon  on 
Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  but  few  I  imagine 


30 

have  seen  this  appeal  to  "old  sinners"  who  may  be  hindered 
in  their  approaches  to  Christ  by  the  thought  that  possibly  they 
have  sinned  away  the  day  of  grace,  in  the  application  of  a 
sermon  on  Pardon  for  the  Greatest  Sinners: 

"Hath  God  said  anywhere  that  he  will  not  accept  of  old 
snuiers  who  come  to  him?  God  hath  often  made  promises 
m  universal  terms,  and  is  there  any  such  exception  put  in? 
Doth  Christ  say,  All  that  thirst  let  them  come  to  me  and  drink 
except  old  sinners?  Come  to  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are 
heavy  laden,  except  old  sinners,  and  I  will  give  you  rest? 
Him  that  cometh  to  me,  I  will  in  no  wise  cast  out,  if  he  be 
not  an  old  sinner?  Did  you  ever  read  such  an  exception  any- 
where in  the  Bible?  And  why  should  you  give  way  to  ex- 
ceptions which,  you  make  out  of  your  own  heads,  or  rather 
which  the  devil  puts  into  your  heads^  and  which  have  no 
foundation  in  the  word  of  God?" 

And  could  there  be  an  appeal  more  expressive  of  the  in- 
most spirit  of  the  Gospel  than  this  from  the  Sermon  on  the 
Excellency  of  Christ,  from  the  text  in  Revelation  that  exhibits 
Christ  as  both  lion  and  lamb? 

"What  is  there  that  you  can  desire  should  be  in  a  Saviour 
that  is  not  in  Christ?  Or  wherein  should  you  desire  a  Saviour 
to  be  otherwise  than  Christ  is?  What  excellency  is  there 
wanting?  What  is  there  that  is  great  and  good?'  What  is 
there  that  is  venerable  and  winning?  What  is  there  that  is 
adorable  or  endearing?  Or  what  can  you  think  of  that  would 
be  encouraging  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  person  of  Christ  ?" 

In  the  light  of  this  other  side  of  the  preaching  of  Ed- 
wards can  we  wonder  at  his  success  in  winning  souls?  We 
have  been  taught  in  recent  years  that  the  depth  and  richness 
of  Christ's  personality  are  a  comparatively  recent  discovery; 
does  not  Edwards  seem  to  have  penetrated  quite  as  far  into 
that  great  and  gracious  mystery  as  any  of  our  modern 
teachers  ? 

The  style,  we  are  told,  is  the  man ;  it  will  not  therefore  be 
considered  beside  the  mark  to  claim  that  there  is  another  side 
also  to  the  style  of  Jonathan  Edwards.  Forbidding  as  it 
often  seems  at  first  view,  cumbrous  and  repetitious,  we  find 
in  it  on  closer  scrutiny,  such  elements  of  power,  of  suggestive- 
ness,  not  seldom  of  beauty,  that  we  may  properly  class  him 


31 

with  our  great  writers.  Edwards  was  entirely  without  ht- 
erary  cuUivation.  President  Woolsey  tells  us  that  logic  was 
the  staple  study  in  Yale  college  at  that  time,  that  during  a 
portion  of  the  course  the  students  were  reciuired  to  dispute 
syllogistically  five  times  a  week  while  not  the  slightest  atten- 
tion was  paid  to  rhetoric  and  composition  at  any  time.  It 
speaks  wonders  for  his  natural  genius  that  with  such  an  utter 
lack  of  training,  he  shows  from  the  first  such  a  power  of  ex- 
pression. The  poetic  element  in  his  writings  has  not  passed 
unnoticed ;  but  so  nuich  emphasis  has  been  placed  on  his  de- 
scription of  Sarah  Pierpont  written  when  he  was  twenty,  as 
to  breed  the  impression  that  this  element  in  his  writing  is  a 
rare  one  and  confined  to  his  youth.  As  matter  of  fact  it  per- 
vades them,  coming  out  now  in  passages  of  sweetness  and 
beauty,  and  now  Miltonic  and  Dantesque  in  their  sublimity 
and  power.  There  is  no  evidence  so  far  as  I  know  that  he  ever 
wrote  a  line  of  metrical  poetry.  I  doubt  whether  there  is  a 
quoted  line  of  poetry  in  all  his  works,  or  a  suggestion  that 
he  had  ever  opened  Milton  or  Shakespeare,  although  it  would 
seem  as  if  at  some  time  in  his  life  copies  of  these  poets  must 
have  been  within  his  reach.  And  yet  we  cannot  doubt  that 
he  had  in  him  the  making  of  a  great  poet  if  he  had  received 
early  cultivation,  and  if  his  energies  had  been  turned  in  that 
direction. 

But  I  have  in  mind  more  particularly  a  feature  of  the 
other  side  of  the  writings  of  Edwards  of  a  different  nature 
and  which  seems  to  have  been  almost  entirely  overlooked, — 
his  power  of  condensed  expression  by  which  great  truths  are 
summed  up  with  the  terseness  of  proverbs,  which  separated 
from  their  cumbrous  surroundings,  and  made  to  shine  in  their 
unobstructed  light,  remind  us  of  the  sentences  of  Emerson. 
They  are  often  sermons  and  treatises  in  a  nutshell  and  none 
the  less  so  that  they  sometimes  provoke  dissent.  A  few  quo- 
tations must  suffice  for  illustration : 

"There  can  be  no  spiritual  knowledge  of  that  of  which 
there  is  not  first  a  rational  knowledge." 

"There  can  be  no  love  without  knowledge." 

"An  imperfect  righteousness  before  a  judge  is  no  right- 
eousness." 

"Praver  is  onlv  the  voice  of  faith." 


32 

"To  say  that  there  is  a  law  that  does  not  require  perfect 
obedience  to  itself,  is  to  say  that  there  is  a  law  that  does  not 
require  all  that  it  requires." 

"So  far  as  anyone  gives  his  love  to  another  he  gives  him- 
self." 

•Faith  with  respect  to  good  is  accepting,  and  with  respect 
to  evil  is  rejecting." 

'There  is  a  difference  between  having  an  opinion  that 
God  is  holy  and  gracious,  and  having  a  sense  of  the  loveliness 
and  beauty  of  that  holiness  and  grace.  There  is  a  difference 
between  having  a  rational  judgment  that  honey  is  sweet,  and 
having  a  sense  of  its  sweetness." 

■■Reason's  work  is  to  perceive  truth,  not  excellency." 

"It  (spiritual  light)  is  a  kind  of  emanation  of  God's  beau- 
ty, and  is  related  to  God  as  the  light  is  to  the  sun." 

Sometimes  there  is  in  these  utterances  a  tinge  of  sarcasm : 

"The  reason  why  many  good  men  behave  no  better  in 
many  instances,  is  not  so  much  that  they  want  grace,  as  that 
they  want  knowledge." 

-  "When  the  wise  man  says  there  is  a  time  to  dance,  that 
does  not  prove  that  the  dead  of  night  is  the  time  for  it." 

He  indulges  but  little  in  extended  comparisons,  but  those 
that 'he  does  use  are  so  perfect  and  often  beautiful,  that  we 
wish  there  were  more  of  them,  as  when  speaking  of  degrees 
of  glory  in  redeemed  saints,  he  says : 

"The  saints  are  so  many  vessels  of  dift'erent  sizes  cast 
into  a  sea  of  happiness  where  every  vessel  is  full ;  this  Christ 
purchased  for  all ;  yet  it  is  left  to  God's  sovereign  pleasure  to 
determine  the  largeness  of  the  vessel;  Christ's  righteousness 
meddles  not  with  this  matter." 

Speaking  of  fitness  for  church  membership  he  says : 

"Nothing  can  be  fitness  for  a  durable  privilege  but  a  dur- 
able qualification.  For  no  qualification  has  any  fitness  or 
adaptedness  for  more  than  it  extends  to :  as  a  short  scabbard 
cannot  be  fit  for  a  long  sword." 

Humor  is  the  last  thing  we  should  look  for  in  the  writ- 
ings of  Jonathan  Edwards,  but  about  as  perfect  a  specimen 
of  it  as  can  be  found  in  the  language  appears  in  the  illustra- 
tion in  which  he  sums  up  the  contradictions  of  the  Arminian 
theorv  of  th-e  human  will : 


33 

"If  some  learned  philosopher,  who  had  been  abroad,  in 
giving  an  account  of  the  curious  observations  he  had  made  in 
his  travels,  should  say,  'He  had  been  in  Terra  del  Fuego  and 
there  had  seen  an  animal  which  he  calls  by  a  certain  name,  that 
begat  and  brought  forth  itself,  and  yet  had  a  sire  and  dam 
distinct  from  itself;  that  it  had  an  appetite  and  was  hungry 
before  it  had  a  being;  that  his  master  who  led  him  and  gov- 
erned him  at  his  pleasure,  was  always  governed  by  him,  and 
driven  by  him  where  he  pleased ;  that  when  he  moved  he  al- 
ways took  a  step  before  the  first  step;  that  he  went  with  his 
head  first,  and  yet  always  went  tail  foremost ;  and  this  though 
he  had  neither  head  nor  tail ; — ^it  woul'a  be  no  imprudence  at 
all  to  tell  such  a  traveler,  though  a  learned  man,  that  he  him- 
self had  no  notion  or  idea  of  such  an  animal  as  he  gave  ac- 
count of,  and  never  had,  nor  ever  would  have." 

The  affinity  in  some  respects  between  the  mind  of  Ed- 
wards and  that  of  Emerson  has  been  frequently  noticed.  It 
certainly  seems  as  if  the  same  mind  that  coined  the  idea  of 
this  self-contradictory  animal  might  have  written  Brahma ; 
or,  if  we  could  imagine  Emerson  reading  the  Freedom  of  the 
Will,  that  he  might  have  plagiarized  Brahma  from  this  illus- 
tration ! 

This  pithy  element  in  Edwards  finds  most  frequent  illus- 
tration in  his  milder  writings,  and  in  his  more  closely  reasoned 
argumentation  when  he  is  in  hot  chase  of  an  opponent, — "driv- 
ing an  enemy  up  Salt  River,"  as  Professor  Park  used  to  say ; 
but  also  sometimes  in  his  most  passionate  and  terrible  passages 
where  it  shines  like  crystals  among  the  scorije  left  by  volcanic 
fires.  But  Edwards  himself  is  so  unconscious  of  this  quality 
that  the  reader  himself  is  likely  to  miss  it.  To  discover  it  by 
search  is  much  like  placer  mining,  requiring  a  good  deal  of 
sifting  out  of  coarser  material  before  the  golden  grains  and 
nuggets  appear.  But  the  discoveries  are  worth  the  pains.  I 
believe  that  a  volume  of  sentences  and  paragraphs  of  this 
nature  might  be  culled  from  his  writings  that  would  outrank 
the  Thoughts  of  Pascal,  that  as  a  stimulus  to  thought  and  a 
help  to  devotion  would  be  of  untold  value  to  the  Christian 
Church,  and  that  would  serve  to  set  Edwards  himself  in  quite 
a  new  light  before  the  world. 


JONATHAN    EDWARDS:   A    STUDY. 
By   Rev.    John    DeWitt,    D.D.,    L.L.  D. 

I  am  deeply  indebted  to  your  Committee  for  the  honor 
they  have  done  me  in  inviting  me  to  take  part  in  this  celebra- 
tion. My  hesitation  in  accepting  their  invitation  was  due  sole- 
ly to  the  feeling  I  had  that  a  son  of  New  England  could  more 
appropriately  than  a  stranger  ask  your  attention  to  an  appre- 
ciation of  this  great  New  Englander.  This  hesitation  was 
overcome,  partly  by  the  cordiality  with  which  the  invitation 
was  extended,  and  partly  by  the  consideration  that  Princeton, 
■where  Edwards  did  his  last  work  and  where  his  body  lies  to- 
day, might  well  be  represented  on  the  occasion  by  which  we 
liave  been  assembled.  Moreover,  Princeton  College,  when 
Edwards  was  called  to  its  presidency,  was  largely  a  New  Eng- 
land institution  of  learning.  Both  of  his  predecessors  in  that 
office,  Jonathan  Dickinson  and  Aaron  Burr,  were  natives  of 
New  England,  graduates  of  the  College  at  New  Haven  and 
Congregational  ministers.  Associated  with  Dickinson  and 
Burr  in  the  planting  of  the  College  were  not  only  other  Yale 


35 

men,  but  Harvard  men  also:  Ebenezer  Pemberton  and  David 
Cowell  and  Jacob  Green  and,  above  all,  Jonathan  Belcher, 
sometime  Royal  Governor  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts  and 
cx-oiticio  Overseer  of  Harvard,  his  alma  mater;  who,  when 
afterward  he  was  commissioned  Royal  Governor  of  the 
Province  of  New  Jersey,  to  repeat  his  own  words,  "adopted 
as  his  own  this  infant  College,"  gave  to  it  a  new  and  more 
liberal  charter,  and  so  largely  aided  it  by  private  gifts  and 
official  influence  that  its  Trustees  called  him  its  "founder, 
patron  and  benefactor."  I  am  glad  as  a  Princeton  man  to  find 
in  the  anniversary  of  the  birth  of  one  of  its  Presidents  an  op- 
portunity to  acknowledge  the  University's  great  debt  to  New 
England.  And,  if  you  will  permit  a  personal  remark,  I  can- 
not forget  that  in  coming  to  these  services  I  am  returning  to 
the  Commonwealth  of  which  I  am  proud  to  have  been  a  citi- 
zen, and  to  the  Massachusetts  Association  of  Congregational 
Ministers  whose  list  of  pastors  for  six  successive  year  con- 
tained my  name.*  I  should  have  to  efface  the  memory  of  a 
pastorate  exceptionally  happy,  and  of  unnumbered  acts  of 
kindness  from  the  living  and  the  dead,  in  order  not  to  feel 
grateful  and  at  home  today. 

But,  after  all,  the  highest  justification  of  this  commemo- 
ration of  a  man  born  two  centuries  ago  is  not  that  his  genius 
and  character  and  career  reflect  glory  on  the  people  and  the 
class  from  whom  he  sprang,  but  that  they  contain  notable  ele- 
ments of  universal  interest  and  value.  The  great  man  is  great 
because  in  some  great  way  he  adequately  addresses,  not  what 
is  exceptional,  not  what  is  distinctive  of  any  class  or  people, 
but  what  is  human  and  common  to  the  race ;  to  whose  message, 
therefore,  men  respond  as  men ;  whose  eulogists  and  interpre- 
ters are  not  necessarily  dwellers  in  his  district  or  people  of 
his  blood ;  who  is  the  common  property  of  all  to  study,  to 
enjoy,  to  revere  and  to  celebrate.  It  is,  above  all,  because 
Jonathan  Edwards  belongs  to  this  small  and  elect  class  that 
we  are  gathered  to  honor  his  memory  by  recalling  his  story 
and  reflecting  on  the  elements  of  his  greatness. 

It  would  be  inappropriate,  certainly  in  this  place  and  be- 
fore this  audience,  for  a  stranger  to  repeat  the  well-known 
story  of  his  life.     I  shall  better  meet  your  expectations  if  I 

*Paotor  of  the  Central  Church,  Boston. 


36 

shall  reproduce  the  impressions  of  the  man  made  on  me  by  a 
renewed  study  of  his  collected  writings  and  his  life. 

We  shall  agree  that  the  inward  career  of  Edwards  was 
singularly  self-consistent;  that  from  its  beginning  to  its  (ilose 
it  is  exceptionally  free  from  incongruities  and  contradictions; 
that  in  him  Wordsworth's  line,  "The  child  is  father  to  the 
man,"  finds  a  signal  illustration.  When  we  are  brought  into 
contact  with  a  life  so  unified,  whose  development  along  its 
own  lines  has  not  been  hindered  or  distorted  by  external  dis- 
turbances as  violent  even  as  that  suffered  by  Edwards  at 
Northampton,  we  naturally  look  for  its  principle  of  unity,  the 
dominating  quality  which  subordinated  to  itself  all  the  others, 
or,  if  you  like,  which  so  interpenetrated  all  his  other  traits  as 
to  become  his  distinctive  note.  We  are  confident  that  such  a 
quality  there  must  have  been,  and  that  if  we  are  happy  enough 
at  once  to  find  it,  we  shall  have  in  our  possession  the  master 
key  which,  so  far  as  may  be  to  human  view,  will  open  to  us 
the  departments  of  his  thought  and  feeling  and  activity. 

A  century  later  than  Edwards  there  was  born  another 
great  New  Englander — Ralph  Waldo  Emerson — between 
whom  and  Edwards  there  is  a  strong  likeness  as  well  as  a 
sharp  contrast.  Because  this  is  his  centennial  year,  Emerson 
like  Edwards  is  just  now  especially  present  to  our  minds,  and 
one  is  temptjed  to  compare  and  contrast  the  two.  To  this 
temptation  I  shall  not  yield.  But  in  order  that  we  may  proper- 
ly approach  and  seize  for  ourselves  a  fine  formula  of  Edwards' 
dominant  quality,  permit  me  to  recall  to  you  a  study  of  Emer- 
son by  a  litterateur  of  great  charm  and  wide  acceptance.  Mr. 
Matthew  Arnold,  in  his  well-known  lecture,  says  that  Emer- 
son is  "not  a  great  poet,"  he  "is  not  a  great  man  of  letters," 
he  "is  not  a  great  philosopher."  Mr.  Arnold,  I  think,  does 
great  injustice  to  Emerson  in  two  of  these  negations.  If  I 
did  not  think  so  I  should  not  associate  him  with  so  great  a 
man  as  Edwards.  I  am  not,  indeed,  concerned  to  defend  the 
claims  of  Emerson  to  "a  place  among  the  great  philosophers." 
His  treatment  of  particular  subjects  was  marked  by  discon- 
tinuity; and  his  tendency  to  gnomic,  sententious  forms  of 
speech  betrayed  him  not  seldom  into  overstatement  or  exag- 
geration. Now,  than  discontinuity  and  overstatement  there 
can    scarcely    be    conceived    more    deadly    foes  'to    system- 


37 


building,  to  the  construction  of  a  world-theory ;  and 
the  construction  of  a  world-theory  is  the  end  of  all  philos- 
ophizing. It  may  be  questioned  whether  Emerson  ever  per- 
mitted himself  to  rest  in  any  fixed  theory  of  the  universe.  I 
have  the  impression  that  for  a  fixed  view  of  the  universe  he 
never  felt  the  need,  and  that  from  all  actual  views  of  the  uni- 
verse which  have  been  fixed  in  formulas  he  revolted.  And, 
therefore,  when  Mr.  Arnold  says,  "Emerson  cannot  be  called 
with  justice  a  great  philosophical  writer — he  cannot  build,  he 
does  not  construct  a  philosophy,"  I  do  not  know  on  what 
grounds  we  can  dissent  from  his  statement. 

But  when  he  goes  further  and,  with  the  same  positiveness, 
says,  "We  have  not  in  Emerson  a  great  writer  or  a  great  poet," 
Mr.  Arnold  passes  from  the  region  of  opinion  based  on  con- 
siderations whose  force  all  estimate  alike,  into  the  region  of 
opinion  which  has  its  source  and  ground  in  mere  individual 
temperament   and   taste.      Moreover,   greatness   is   a   word   so 
vague  as  scarcely  to  raise  a  definite  issue ;  and  this  fact  might 
well  have  prevented  so  careful  and  acute  a  critic   from  em- 
ploying it  to  deny  to  Emerson  a  quality  which  Mr.  Arnold 
would  have  found  difficult  to  define.     Certainly  this  much  can 
be  said.     If  Emerson  is  not  "a  great  writer,  a  great  man  of 
letters,"  yet.  in  his  unfolding  of  ideas  and  in  his  portrayal  and 
criticism  of  nature  ar.d  of  life,  he  has  nobly  fulfilled  and  is  still 
fulfilling  the  function  of  a  great  man  of  letters  to  thousands  of 
disciplined  minds;   interpreting  for  them  and  teaching  them 
to  interpret  nature  and  man,  educating  their  judgments,  cul- 
tivating their  taste,  introducing  them  to  "the  best  that  has 
been   thought   and    written,"   and   stimulating   and    ennobling 
their  whole  intellectual  life.     And  if  he  is  not,  as  Mr.  Arnold 
says  he  is  not.  "sensuous  and  impassioned"  in  his  poetry,  we 
must  not  forget  that  reflective  poetry  is  Emerson's  best  and 
most  characteristic  poetic  achievement;  that  reflective  poetry 
cannot  possibly  be  "censuous  and  impassioned" ;  and  that  Mr. 
Arnold  is  prejudiced  against  all  reflective  poetry,  and.  indeed 
does  not  think  it  poetry,  whether  it  be  Emerson's  or  Words- 
worth's. 

But  though  Mr.  Arnold  does  Emerson  injustice  in  these 
two  negative  propositions.  I  think  that,  in  his  positive  state- 
ment, he  has  firmly  seized  and  happily  formulated  Emerson's 


38 

dominating  quality.  He  has  given  us  the  real  clue  to  the  sig- 
nificance of  Emerson's  literary  product,  regarded  as  a  whole, 
when  he  says  of  him:  "Emerson  is  the  friend  and  aider  of 
those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit."  The  friendship  of  Emer- 
son for  "those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit"  is,  indeed,  his 
characteristic  trait.  He  is  also  their  "aider,"  as  Mr.  Arnold 
says.  But  the  aid  he  offers  them  is  conditioned  precisely  by 
the  fact  that  he  is  a  man  of  letters  and  a  poetic  interpreter  of 
nature  and  of  life,  and  that  he  does  not  bring  to  them  a  phil- 
osophy. I  say,  the  aid  he  offers  is  conditioned  by  this  lack  of 
a  philosophy ;  and  by  conditioned  I  mean  limited.  For  because 
of  it  the  realm  of  nature  and  spirit,  as  he  presents  it,  is  vast 
indeed,  but  vague  and  undefined  and,  so  far  forth,  unrevealed. 
And  therefore,  as  Mr.  Arnold  himself  points  out,  his  aid  is 
confined  to  the  sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments  and  action.  Mr. 
Arnold  does,  indeed,  express  the  opinion  that  "as  Words- 
worth's poetry  is  the  most  important  work  done  in  verse  in 
our  language  in  the  nineteenth  century,  so  Emerson's  essays 
are  the  most  important  work  done  in  prose."  But  this  is  the 
language  of  purely  personal  judgment.  Far  more  important 
for  us  in  estimating  Emerson,- with  Mr.  Arnold's  help,  as  "an 
aider  of  those  who  would  live  in  the  spirit,"  is  the  sentence 
in  which,  he  formulates  the  precise  content  of  the  aid  which 
Emerson  extends.  And  this  is  the  sentence:  "Happiness  in 
labor,  righteousness  and  veracity ;  in  all  the  life  of  the  spirit ; 
happiness  and  eternal  hope — that  was  Emerson's  gospel."  A 
fair  and  felicitous  description  it  is.  And  how  clearly  it  reveals 
the  limit  of  the  aid  which  Emerson's  gospel  offers !  How 
clearly  it  reveals  that  the  aid  extended  is  not  the  aid  of  a  great 
thinker  in  the  sphere  of  ultimate  knowing  and  absolute  being, 
but  is  aid  confined  to  the  sphere  of  the  moral  sentiments  and 
action ! 

Thus,  by  a  route  somewhat  circuitous  indeed,  but  I  trust 
not  wholly  without  interest  or  propriety,  we  reach,  in  Mr. 
Arnold's  characterization  of  Emerson,  the  formula  of  which 
1  spoke  as  finely  expressing  Edwards'  dominating  and  unify- 
ing quality.  Edwards  like  Emerson  is,  above  all  else  and  by 
eminence,  "the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in 
the  spirit."  Who  that  knows  him  at  all  will  denv  him  a  right 
equal  to  that  of  Emerson  to  this  high  title?     Of  course,  they 


differ  widely  both  in  the  aid  they  offer  and  in  their  methods  of 
offering  it.  Emerson's  aid  is  conditioned  and  Hmited,  as  I 
have  already  said,  by  his  want  of  a  firm  and  self-consistent 
doctrine  of  the  imiverse,  by  his  want  of  a  philosophy.  And 
we  must  be  just  as  ready  to  acknowledge  that  Edwards'  aid 
IS  as  clearlv  conditioned  and  limited  by  his  unfortunate  poverty 
m  the  humanities,  by  his  notal)le  lack  of  feeling  for  poetry  and 
letters.  On  the  other  hand  and  positively  I  think  we  may  say, 
that  it  would  be  hard  to  name  a  man  of  letters  who,  having 
separated  himself  from  all  formulated  philosophical  and  re- 
ligious beliefs,  has  more  nearly  than  Emerson  exhausted  the 
resources  of  letters  and  poetry  in  the  service  of  "those  who 
would  live  in  the  spirit."  And  among  the  great  doctors  of  the 
Christian  Church,  it  would  be  as  hard  to  name  one  more  dis- 
tinctively spiritual  in  character  and  aim  than  Edwards,  or  one 
who,  in  cultivating  the  spiritual  life  in  himself  and  promoting 
it  in  others,  has  more  consistently  or  more  ably  drawn  on  the 
resources  of  his  philosophy,  his  world-view,  his  Christian  doc- 
trine of  the  universe. 

I  am  quite  sure  that  this  obvious  likeness  and  difference 
between  Edwards  and  .Emerson  is  the  right  point  of  departure 
for  any  large  study  of  their  affinity  and  opposition.  Such  a 
study  the  day  invites  us  to  mention,  but  does  not  permit  us  to 
undertake.  The  day  belongs,  not  to  the  great  Puritan  who 
gave  up  the  Puritan  conception  of  the  universe  for  its  inter- 
pretation by  poetry  and  letters,  but  to  the  great  Puritan  who 
denied  himself  the  high  satisfactions  of  literature,  that 
through  his  distinctively  Christian  doctrine  of  God  and  man 
he  might  be  "the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would  live  in 
the  spirit."  It  is  to  his  spirituality,  and  to  his  intellectual  gifts 
and  work,  that  I  ask  your  attention. 


Plow  many  writers  have  portrayed  wdiat  one  of  them 
calls  the  "spirituality  of  mind"  of  the  Northern  and  Teutonic 
peoples !  One  of  the  most  striking  passages  in  Taine's  Eng- 
lish Literature  contrasts  in  this  particular  the  Latin  and  Teu- 
tonic races.  And  a  New  England  theologian  and  man  of  let- 
ters, in  unfolding  the  truth  that  the  Northern  nations  of  Eu- 
rope, unlike  the  Southern,  were  "spiritual  in  their  modes  of 


40 


thouoht  ■"  calls  our  attention  to  the   fact  that  -the  Northern 
heathen' had  fewer  gods  than  the  Southern,  and  could  believe 
in  their  reality  without  the  aid  of  visible  form.     He  hewed  no 
idol    and  he  erected  no  temple ;  he  worshiped  his  divinity  m 
spirit,  beneath  the  open  sky,  in  the  free  air."     How  far  this 
spiritual  temper  can  be  attributed  to  climate,  to  "the  influences 
which  rained  down  from  the  cold  Northern  sky,"  we  cannot 
say.     Racial  character  would  best  be  accepted  as  an  ultimate 
fact.    The  fact  itself  is  certain,  that  among  the  European  peo- 
ples, the  race  to  which  Edwards  belonged  was  most  strongly 
marked  by  this  spiritual  quality.     Moreover,  it  was  precisely 
by  the  greater  strength  and  intensity  of  this  racial  quality  that 
the  Puritan  class  was  separated  as  a  class  from  their  own  peo- 
ple.    Spiritualitv  is  what  the  logicians  call  the  specific  differ- 
ence of  Puritanism.  The  unshaken  belief  in  the  reality  of  the 
spiritual  universe,  the  ability  to  realize  its  elements  without  the 
aid  of  material  symbols,  the  strong  impulse  to  find  motives  to 
action  in  the  unseen  and  eternal,  to  feed  the  intellect  and  the 
heart  on  spiritual  objects,  and  in  distinctively  spiritual  exper- 
iences or  exercises  to  discern  the  highest  joys  and  the  deepest 
sorrows   and   the   great   crisis   of   life— these   were   the   traits 
of  the  Puritans.    And  these  traits  were  exhibited,  not  by  a  few 
cloistered  souls  who  obeyed  the  "counsels  of  perfection"  and 
were  secluded  from  their  fellows  by  special  vows  of  poverty, 
celibacy  and  obedience,  but  by  the  mass  of  the  population  in 
Puritan  New  England;  by  countrymen  and  villagers  and  citi- 
zens and  statesmen.     This  spirituality  organized  the  govern- 
ments and  determined  the  politics  of  vigorous  commonwealths. 
Theocratic  republics,  as  spiritual  as  that  which,  under  Savon- 
arola, had  so  short  a  life  in  Florence,  flourished  for  genera- 
tions on  American  soil.     It  was  in  this  Puritan  society  that 
Jonathan   Edwards'   American    ancestors     lived.     They    were 
typical  Puritans,  justly  esteemed  and  influential  in  the  com- 
munities in  which  they  dwelt.    The  convictions,  traditions  and 
spirit  of  the  class  were  theirs.     This  was  especially  true  of 
both  his  father  and  his  mother.     The  simplicity,  the  sincerity, 
the   spirituality  of   Puritanism   at   its  best   were   incarnate   in 
them;  and  it  was  the  Puritan  ideal  of  life  which,  before  his 
birth,  they  prayed  might  be  actualized  in  their  unborn  child. 

Belonging  to  this  spiritual  race,  sprung  from  this  spir- 
itual class,  descended  from  such  an  ancestry  and  born  of  such 


41 

a  parentage,  we  have  the  right  to  anticipate  that  his  dominant 
quahty  wih  be  this  spirituahty  of  which  I  have  spoken.  We 
have  the  right  to  look  for  what  Dr.  Egbert  Smyth  calls,  "Ed- 
wards' transcendent  spiritual  personality,"  and  concerning 
which  he  says,  that  "the  spiritual  element"  in  Edwards  "is 
not  a  mere  factor  in  a  great  career,  a  strain  in  a  noble  char- 
acter. It  is  his  calmest  mood  as  well  as  his  most  impassioned 
warning  or  pleading,  his  profoundest  reasoning,  his  clearest 
insight,  his  widest  outlook.  It  is  the  solid  earth  on  which  he 
treads"  Dr.  Smyth  has  thus  stated  in  suggestive  phrase  the 
supreme  truth  concerning  Edwards ;  the  truth  that  his  dom- 
inating quality,  his  differentiating  trait,  his  prevailing  habit  of 
mind,  is  spirituality.  The  time  at  my  disposal  does  not  per- 
mit tne  illustration  of  this  great  quality  in  any  adequate  way. 
I  can  only  touch  on  a  few  particulars  which  may  help  us  better 
to  appreciate  it. 

The  careful  student  of  Edwards  is  deeply  impressed,  first 
of  all,  by  his  immediate  vision  of  the  spiritual  universe  as  the 
reality  of  realities.  When  I  speak  of  the  spiritual  universe,  I 
am  giving  a  name  to  no  indefinite  object  of  thought.  I  mean 
God  in  His  supernatural  attributes  of  righteousness  and  love, 
the  moral  beings  created  in  His  miage,  the  relations  between 
them,  and  the  thoughts  and  feelings  and  activities  whicii 
emerge  out  of  these  relations.  This  was  the  universe  in  which 
Edwards  lived  and  moved  and  had  his  being.  As  he  appre- 
hended it,  it  was  no  mere  subjective  experience,  no  mere 
plexus  of  sensations  and  thoughts  and  volitions.  It  was  the  one 
fundamental  substance  and  the  one  real  existence.  It  was  the 
one  objective  certainty  which  stands  over  against  the  shadowy 
and  illusory  phenomena  that  we  group  under  the  title  matter. 
And  his  vision  of  it  was  vivid  and  in  a  sense  complete.  He 
knew  it  not  only  in  its  several  parts,  but  as  a  whole,  as  an 
ordered  universe ;  as  the  macrocosm  which  he,  the  microcosm, 
reflected  and  to  which  he  responded. 

All  this  is  true  in  a  measure,  to  be  sure,  of  all  the  other 
saints  and,  indeed,  of  the  sinners  also.  It  is  in  what  I  have 
.called  the  immediacy  of  his  spiritual  apprehension  that  his  dis- 
tniction  lies.  There  is,  of  course,  a  sense  in  which  the  spiritual 
-world  is  immediately  discerned  bv  all  of  us.  It  is  of  spirit 
rather  than   of   matter   that   our  knowledge   is   direct.      That 


42 

consciousness  of  a  self  which  cannot  be  construed  in  terms  of 
matter,  or  that  idea  of  self  which  is  a  necessary  postulate  of 
all  our  thinking  brings  us  at  once  into  the  universe  of  spirit. 
But  in  order  to  the  vivid  realization  of  this  spiritual  universe, 
there  is  necessary  for  the  most  of  us  a  special  activity  or  ex- 
perience. And  by  this  activity  or  experience  our  realization 
of  the  spiritual  world  is  mediated.  Edwards,  in  this  respect, 
is  a  remarkable  exception  in  his  own  class.  Consider  some 
great  and  notable  men  of  the  spiritual  type.  Consider  St. 
yVugustine.  How  true  it  is  that  the  great  elements  of  the 
spiritual  world  became  vivid  to  Augustine  through  the  media- 
tion of  his  experience  of  sin !  And  that  these  spiritual  ele- 
ments were  always  interpreted  by  the  aid  of  that  experience, 
his  Confessions  abundantly  testify.  Or  think  of  Dante.  As 
Augustine  reveals  in  his  Coufcssioiis  the  instrumental  relation 
to  his  deepening  spirituality  of  the  long  period  of  sinful  storm 
and  stress,  Dante  makes  perfectly  clear  to  us  in  The  Nezu  Life 
that  it  was  the  love  of  Beatrice  which  so  mediated  for  him  the 
spiritual  world  and  so  brought  him  under  its  sway,  that  in 
order  to  repeat  and  interpret  the  vision  of  it  he  laid  under 
contribution  his  total  gifts  and  learning.  Or  take  John  Cal- 
vin. That  fruitful  conception — more  fruitful  in  Church  and 
State  than  any  other  conception  which  has  held  the  English- 
speaking-  world — of  the  absolute  and  universal  sovereignty  of 
the  Holy  God  as  a  revolt  from  the  conception  then  prevailing 
of  the  sovereignty  of  the  human  head  of  an  earthly  Church, 
was  historically  the  mediator  and  instaurator  of  his  spiritual 
career. 

Now  Edwards  is  distinguished  from  Augustine,  Dante 
and  Calvin  by  the  fact  that  his  intuition  of  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse was,  in  the  sense  in  which  I  have  used  the  world,  imme- 
diate. To  a  degree  I  should  be  unwilling  to  affirm  of  any  oth- 
er man  I  have  studied,  except  one,  his  spirituality  was  natural. 
That  he  was  a  sinner,  needing  regeneration  and  atonement,  he 
knew.  That  these  were  his  blessed  experience  he  was  grate- 
fully assured.  But  except  the  apostle  called  by  eminence  "the 
Theologian,"  St.  John  the  Divine,  I  know  no  other  great  char- 
acter in  Church  History  of  whom  it  can  so  emphatically  be 
said,  and  when  he  'breathed  the  pure  serene"  of  tha  spiritual 
world  and  gazed  upon  its  outstanding  features,  or  explored 


43 

its  recesses,  or  studied  the  inter-relations  of  its  essential  ele- 
ments, he  did  so  as  "native  and  to  the  manner  born."  To 
quote  again  the  words  of  Dr.  Smyth:  "It  is  the  solid  earth  on 
which  he  treads,  its  sleeping  rocks  and  firm-set  hills." 

'i  he  spiritual  universe,  thus  vividly  and,  immediately  ap- 
prehended as  the  reality  of  realities,  of  course,  became,  in  turn, 
the  interpreter  to  himself  of  all  he  did  and  felt.  It  became 
even  the  regnant  principle  of  his  association  of  ideas,  so  that 
the  unpurposed  movements  of  his  mind  in  reveries  were  de- 
termined by  it.  How  influential  in  his  earliest  thinking  it  was, 
you  will  see  if  you  study  his  Notes  on  mind  and  ultimate  be- 
ing; and  how  persistent  it  was,  you  will  see  in  his  latest  ob- 
servations on  The  End  of  God  in  Creation.  It  governed  his 
aesthetics  also.  The  line  between  aesthetic  emotion  and  spir- 
itual feeling  is  sharp,  and  wide,  and  deep.  Often  as  the  two 
are  confounded  by  those  whose  sensibilities  are  strongly  stirred 
by  beauty  in  nature  or  in  fine  art,  it  is  still  true  that  they  are 
as  distinct  as  spirit  and  matter.  The  aesthetic  emotion  is  ulti- 
mate and  never  can  be  made  over  into  spiritual  affection.  No 
one  knew  this  better  than  Edwards.  But  through  both  reflec- 
tion and  experience  he  reached  and  formulated  the  conclusion, 
that  the  hig-hest  and  most  enduring  aesthetic  emotion  is  that 
which  is  called  out  not  by  material  beauty  but  by  holiness. 
And  he  may  be  said  to  have  unfolded  the  great  mediaeval 
phrase.  "The  beatific  vision  of  God,"  into  the  doctrine  of  the 
highest  beauty,  in  his  epoch-making  treatise — epoch-making 
in  America  certainly  the  treatise  was — on  The  Nature  of 
Virtue.  This  seems  to  me  a  striking  instance  of  the  way 
in  which  his  spirituality  permeated  and  irradiated  his  thinking. 
,  I  think  that  even  the  traits  of  Edwards'  style  are  best 
explained  by  this  same  quality.  It  has  often  been  said  of  him 
that  style  is  precisely  what  Edwards  lacked.  We  are  told 
that,  after  reading  Clarissa  Harlozve,  he  expressed  regret  that 
m  his  earlier  years  he  did  not  pay  more  attention  to  style.  We 
may  be  thankful  certainly  that  he  did  not  form  his  style  on 
that  of  the  affluent  Richardson.  I  am  unable  to  share  the 
regret  he  expressed  ;  unless,  indeed,  it  was  a  regret  that  he 
did  not  always  take  pains  to  make  his  literary  product  eminent 
in  the  qualities  of  style  which  always  marked  it.  Edwards 
was  above  all  things  sincere;  and  his  style  is  the  man.     Its 


44 

qualities  are  clearness,  severe  simplicity,  movement  and  force. 
In  these  he  is  eminent,  almost  as  eminent  as  John  Locke;  and 
he  is  more  eminent  in  his  later  than  in  his  earlier  composi- 
tions. They  finely  fit  his  theme  and  his  spirit.  His  theme  in 
substance  is  one.  It  is  the  spiritual  universe,  in  some  aspect 
of  it.  And  his  spirit  is  that  of  a  man  dominated  by  those  spir- 
itual afl:ections  which  he  teaches  us  are  a  lively  action  of  the 
will.  It  was  appropriate  that  his  style  should  be  calm  and 
severe,  and  that  even  in  his  sermons  it  should  lack  the  dilation 
and  rhythm  of  a  rapt  prophet's  emotional  utterance.  Edwards 
was  no  Montanist.  He  was  a  seer,  indeed,  but  a  seer  with  a 
clear  vision;  and  the  spirit  of  the  prophet  was  subject  to  the 
prophet.  No  man  of  his  day  was,  so  far  as  I  know,  the  sub- 
ject of  stronger  or  deeper  spiritual  afi^ections.  But  no  one 
knew  better  just  what  spiritual  affections  are.  He  knew  es- 
pecially how  different  they  are  from  mere  sensibility ;  and  he 
was  always  calm  under  their  sway.  No  other  style  than  his 
could  have  so  well  reflected  and  expressed  this  spiritual,  un- 
hysterical  man.  And  I  must  believe  that  his  is  the  direct  fruit 
of  his  spiritual  cjuality.  Certainly,  it  was  spiritually  effective. 
Never  did  any  one's  discourse  make  a  more  powerful  and  at 
the  same  time  a  more  distinctively  and  exclusively  spiritual 
impression  on  audience  or  readers.  One  of  the  most  charm- 
ing of  modern  poems  is  that  in  which  Tennyson  portrays  the 
Lady  Godiva,  that  she  might  take  the  tax  from  off  her  people, 
riding  at  high  noon  through  Coventry  "naked,  but  clothed  on 
with  chastity."  So  seem  to  me  the  bare  and  unadorned  ser- 
mons and  discussions  of  Edwards.  Straight  through  his  sub- 
ject to  his  goal  this  master  moves ;  unadorned  yet  not  un- 
clothed, but  clothed  upon  with  spirituality. 

Or  consider  Edwards'  emotional  life.  Dr.  xA^llen,  of  Cam- 
bridge, in  his  paper  on  The  Place  of  Edzvards  in  History,  has 
dwelt  fondly-  on  what  he  calls  the  spiritual  affinity  between 
Dante  and  Edwards.  He  makes  the  remark,  that  "the  deepest 
of  Edwards  was  not  that  with  Calvin  or  with  Augustine,  but 
with  the  Florentine  poet."  Now,  I  am  sure,  that  of  his  affinity 
with  Augustine  and  with  Calvin,  Edwards  was  distinctly  con- 
scious. Cut  nowhere,  so  far  as  I  know,  is  there  the  slightest  in- 
timation that  he  had  any  interest  in  Dante's  Nezv  Life  or  The 
Divine  Comedy.     He  was  no  idealizing  poet,  no  literary  artist, 


45 


no  allegorizer ;  and  he  seems  to  have  taken  little  or  no  pleasure 
in  this  kind  of  literature.  Had  there  been  a  fundamental  sym- 
pathy between  Dante  and  Edwards,  it  would  have  expressed 
itself  in  Edwards'  works  with  Edwards'  characteristic  dis- 
tinctness. But  not  only  is  Dante  not  mentioned,  but,  what  is 
more  striking,  there  is  not  an  illusion,  I  think,  in  Edwards' 
works  to  the  poems  of  the  Puritan  John  Milton  or  the  alle- 
gories of  the  Puritan  John  Bunyan.  This  seems  inexplicable 
on  Dr.  Allen's  theory  of  a  strong  affinity  between  the  New 
England  theologian  and  the  Florentine  poet.  Most  unhappy, 
however,  is  the  palmary  instance  of  this  alleged  affinity  selected 
by  Dr.  Allen  for  remark.  It  is  what  he  calls  the  striking 
spiritual  likeness  between  Dante's  words  touching  his  first 
sight  of  Beatrice  and  Edwards'  description  of  Sarah  Pierpont. 
I  refer  to  them,  not  to  criticise  Dr.  Allen,  but  because  the  strik- 
ing contrast  between  them  helps  us  the  better  to  appreciate  the 
regnancy  of  Edwards'  spiritual  quality,  even  when  he  was" 
under  the  spell  of  earthly  love. 

And  the  contrast  is  striking.  Dante  in  noble  and  beau- 
tiful words  describes  the  dress  that  Beatrice  wore.  "Her 
dress  on  that  day  was  a  most  noble  color,  a  subdued  and  good- 
ly crimson,  girded  and  adorned  in  such  sort  as  best  suited 
with  her  tender  age."  He  exalts  her  in  a  way  which  Edwards 
would  have  severely  reproved,  in  the  words,  "Behold  the  de- 
ity which  is  stronger  than  I,  who  coming  to  me  will  rule  with- 
m  me."  And  he  confesses  in  powerful  and  poetic  phrases  the 
violent  effect  upon  his  body  which  his  strong  emotion  pro- 
duced. The  whole  picture  is  charming,  poetic,  ideal,  and  was 
written  in  a  book  for  the  public,  years  after  the  boy  had  seen 
the  girl.  The  greatest  poet  of  his  time,  if  not  of  all  time,  in 
maturer  life  looks  back  upon  the  meeting  and,  with  consum- 
mate art,  I  do  not  say  with  insincerity,  transfigures  it. 

How  different  is  Edwards'  well-known  description  of 
Sarah  Pierpont !  It  was  written  in  Edwards'  youth,  four  years 
before  his  marriage;  not  in  a  book  for  the  public,  but  on  a 
blank  leaf  for  his  own  eye.  In  its  own  way  it  is  as  engaging 
as  Dante's.  But  its  way  is  not  artistic  or  imaginative  at  all 
It  IS  distinctively  and  exclusively  spiritual.  There  is  no  ideal- 
ization, no  translation  of  the  object  of  his  love  into  a  symbol 
no  physical  transport,  no  agitation,  no  "shaking  of  the  pulses 


46 

of  the  body."  We  learn  nothing  of  Sarah  Pierpont's  dress  of 
appearance  or  temperament.  All  he  tells  us  about  her  is  about 
her  spiritual  qualities  and  her  relations  to  the  spiritual  uni- 
verse. ,  And  at  the  last,  on  his  deathbed,  he  sends  to  his  absent 
wife,  this  Sarah  Pierpont,  his  love ;  and  again  speaks  of  the 
uncommon  union  between  them  as,  he  trusts,  spiritual  and 
therefore  immortal.  Read  in  connection  with  the  brief  refer- 
ences to  his  household  life  to  be  found  in  his  biography,  these 
passages  bring  before  us  a  man  whose  closest  and  tenderest 
earthly  love  was  transfigured,  not  by  artistic  genius,  but  by 
what  I  have  called  his  dominating  spirituality.  And  both 
passages  issue  naturally  out  of  that  spiritual  conception  of 
beauty  which  he  has  so  finely  unfolded  in  the  great  essay  on 
Virtue. 

This  same  quality  manifests  itself  in  the  impartiality  and 
impersonality  of  his  feeling  under  conditions  well  calculated 
to  awaken  strong  partial  and  personal  feelings.  Go  through 
the  whole  history  of  the  unfortunate  Northampton  contro- 
versy. Read  the  correspondence  of  Edwards,  his  speeches  be- 
fore the  several  Councils  and  the  Fanvell  Sermon.  Or  mark 
his  behavior  vmder  the  trying  conditions  of  a  recrudescence  in 
Stockbridge  of  the  enmity  shown  at  Northampton.  And  you 
will  see  what  I  mean,  when  I  say  that  his  spirituality  is  ex- 
hibited in  the  impartiality  of  his  feelings  and  the  impersonality 
of  their  objects.  You  will  agree  with  me  that  in  all  of  it  he 
was  true  to  his  thesis ;  that  private  feelings  must  be  subordi- 
nated to  that  benevolence,  that  spiritual  love  of  being  in  gen- 
eral, which  is  the  essence  of  virtue.  Indeed,  I  recall  no  other 
instance  of  a  severe  and  protracted  trial,  in  which  the  chief 
figure  appears  so  unconcerned  about  everything  except  its 
spiritual  significance. 

But  it  is  in  the  work  to  which  he  gave  himself,  in  the 
subjects  on  which  he  labored,  in  his  method  of  treatment,  in 
the  conclusions  he  reached,  that  Edwards'  spirituality  is  most 
impressively  revealed.  He  was  interested  apparently  in  noth- 
ing but  the  spiritual  universe  and  the  spiritual  life.  Of  course, 
the  whole  of  Edwards  is  not  known  to  us.  We  rarely,  if 
ever,  catch  sight  of  him  in  his  avocations,  so  strong  was  his 
sense  of  vocation.  I  discover  in  him  no  interest  in  politics,  in 
literature,  in  the  plastic  or  even  the  intellectual  arts.     In  dis- 


47 

tinctively  intellectual  pursuits  other  than  religious  he  did  at 
times  engage.  But  he  engaged  in  them,  certainly  in  his  ma- 
turer  years,  only  in  order  to  the  thorough  concentration  of 
his  powers  on  his  spiritual  work.  Thus,  when  his  mind  was 
strained  by  excessive  study  and  would  not  hold  itself  to  a 
severely  spiritual  train  of  thought,  or  when  his  imagination 
rose  in  rebellion  and  tempted  him,  he  whipped  each  in  to  sub- 
jection by  setting  his  powers  to  the  solution  of  a  difficult 
mathematical  problem ;  and  so  he  regained  possession  of  him- 
self solely  for  high  spiritual  purposes.  And  how  spiritual  his 
purposes  were  let  the  titles  of  his  works  testify,  from  the  first 
published  sermon  to  the  great  treatises  on  Sin,  Virtue  and  the 
Will,  and  finally  the  great  Body  of  Divinity  in  historical  form, 
which  in  his  letter  to  the  Trustees  of  Princeton  he  describes  as 
his  coming  work,  and  in  describing  which  his  soul  expands 
and  his  style,  almost  for  the  first  time,  becomes  rhythmical. 

We  are  therefore  entitled  to  say  with  emphasis  that  the 
dominant  quality  of  Edwards  is  spirituality — spirituality  of 
mind,  of  feeling,  of  aim  and  action.  The  spiritual  universe 
was  for  him  not  only  the  most  certain  and  substantial  of  real- 
ities, but  the  exclusive  object  of  contemplation.  Purely  spir- 
itual feeling  seems  to  have  filled  in  his  life  the  great  spaces 
which  in  the  lives  of  most  men  are  occupied  by  passionate 
sensibilities  and  aesthetic  pleasures.  Or  we  may  better  say, 
that  his  exceptional  personality  was  the  alembic  in  which  these 
sensibilities  and  pleasures  were  transmuted  into  the  pure 
distillate  of  spiritual  feeling;  until  all  his  outgoing  and  active 
affections  rested  on  spiritual  qualities  and  objects,  and  all  his 
reactions  of  emotion  were  the  blessednesses  of  the  spirit. 
When  his  will  energized  and  called  the  great  powers  of  his 
intellect  into  action  it  was  on  the  most  spiritual  themes  that 
his  mind  wrought  with  the  greatest  ease  and  geniality.  Dis- 
tant in  manner  and  reserved  on  most  subjects,  whenever  he 
conversed  about  heavenly  and  divine  things  of  which  his  heart 
was  so  full,  "his  tongue,"  says  Dr.  Samuel  Hopkins,  "was  as 
the  pen  of  a  ready  writer."  The  spiritual  world  so  completely 
possessed  him  that  its  contemplation  and  exposition  seems 
never  to  have  tired  him.  After  receivinlf  the  invitation  to 
Princeton,  he  told  his  eldest  son  that  for  many  years  he  had 
spent  fourteen  hours  a  day  in  his  study.  Spiritual  thinking 
and  feeling  were  thus  both  his  labor  and  his  recreation. 


48 

This  exclusive  spirituality  of  Edwards  explains  his  lack 
of  charm  and  interest.  For  obviously  he  is  lacking  here.  Com- 
pare with  the  lack  of  interest  in  Edwards  the  interest  the 
world  has  always  taken  in  Luther,  in  the  stormy  career  of 
Knox,  in  the  incessant  and  varied  activity  of  Calvin,  and  earlier 
than  these  in  the  dramatic  life  of  Augustine.  Shall  we  say 
that  he  charms  us  less  because  he  was  a  more  spiritual  man,  or 
only  because  he  was  more  exclusively  spiritual ;  because  he  was 
less  wealthily  endowed  with  humane  sympathies?  Is  it  because 
of  his  delicate  organization  and  feeble  vitality?  Or  is  it  be- 
cause, under  the  domination  of  the  spiritual  universe,  and 
knowing-  well  his  own  powers  and  limitations,  he  determined 
to  know  this  one  thing  only?  Or  is  it,  after  all,  only  the  de- 
fect of  his  biographers?  I  do  not  know.  Certainly  he  pre- 
sents a  striking  contrast  to  the  other  great  spiritual  men  whom 
1  have  named.  And  I  think  we  are  bound  to  acknowledge  that 
his  remarkable  separation  in  spirit  from  the  feelings  and  tastes 
and  occupations  of  the  people  seriously  limited  his  usefulness, 
and  seriously  limits  it  to-day.  But  when  all  is  said,  his  spir- 
ituality is  his  strength.  And  in  a  world  where  social  charm 
and  sympathy  is  abundant,  and  where  high  and  exclusive 
spirituality  is  in  the  greatest  men  as  rare  as  radium ;  we  ought 
to  rejoice  that  of  one  of  the  greatest  it  is  true  that  he  was 
bond-slave  to  the  spiritual  world. 

The  clue  to  Edwards  then,  his  dominating  and  irradiating 
quality,  the  trait  which  gave  unity  to  his  career,  is  his  spirit- 
uality. His  was  indeed,  to  repeat  the  fine  word  of  Dr.  Egbert 
Smyth,    "a   transcendent   spiritual   personality." 

II. 

I  have  detained  you  so  long  on  this  subject  that  I  must 
treat  briefly  and  inadequately  Edwards'  intellect  and  work. 

It  was  as  a  bond-slave  then  to  the  spiritual  universe  that 
all  his  work  was  done.  Now  his  work  was  not  that  of  a 
philanthropist  or  a  missionary.  It  was  the  work  of  a  thinker. 
The  instrument  with  which  he  wrought  was- his  intellect;  and 
the  word  which  describes  the  quality  as  distinguished  from 
the  subject  of  his  writings  is  the  word,  intellectual.  This  is 
as  true  of  his  sermons  as  it  is  of  his  elaborate  treatises.    And, 


49 


as  a  whole,  his  works  constitute  an  intellectual  svstem  of  the 
spiritual  universe. 

Eminently  intellectual  in  his  activity,  Edwards,  so  far  as 
I  can  see,  had  no  intellectual  pride.  His  intellect  he  regarded 
simply  as  an  instrument  to  be  employed  in  the  service  of  the 
spiritual  world.  And  as  such  an  instrument,  if  we  would  do 
him  justice,  we  must  regard  it.  We  must  seize  and  estimate 
its  outstanding  traits  as  they  reveal  themselves  in  this  char- 
acteristic activity  which  he  solemnly  accepted  as  his  vocation. 
What,  then,  were  the  distinctive  traits  of  Edwards'  intellect, 
and  what  position  must  we  assign  to  him  among  intellectual 
men,  especially  among  theologians? 

The  genius  of  Luther  and  that  of  Calvin  have  often  been 
contrasted.     There  is  a  general  agreement  that  while  Luther 
saw  single  truths  with  the  greater  clearness  and  the   sooner 
recognized  their  capital  value,  to  Calvin  must  be  attributed  in 
greater  measure  the  gift  of  construction;   the  great  gift   by 
which  he  organized  in  a  system  the  principles  of  the  Protestant 
Reformation.     Now  though  Edwards  nowhere  shows  the  bold- 
ness and  originality  of  either  of  these  men ;  though  he  never 
inaugurated  a  new  mode  of  Christianity  like  Luther  or  organ- 
ized its  theology  like  Calvin,  and,  therefore,  holds  no  place 
beside  them  in  history ;  he  had  both  a  gift  of  penetration  like 
Luther's  and  a  gift  of  construction  like  Calvin's.     It  is  also 
true,  I  think,  that  in  the  subtlety  of  his  intellect  he  was  greater 
than  either.     The  man  of  all  men  whom  he  seems  to  me  most 
like  intellectually  and,  indeed,  every  way— in  the  character  of 
his  religious  experience,  in  his  genial  acceptance  of  the  theo- 
logical system  he  inherited,  in  his  philosophical  insight,  in  his 
power  in  the  exposition  of  abstract  truth,  in  his  fruitfulness, 
in  his  constructive  ability  and  in  his   failure  nevertheless  to 
leave  behind  him  a  completed  system,  in  his  fundamental  philo- 
sophical and  theological  views,  in  his  idealism  and  Platonism 
—IS  Anselm  of  Canterbury.    And,  having  regard  to  the  works 
they   have   left   behind   them— the  one,   the   Monologium  and 
Pros!  0  gill  in ,   the    Tract  on  Predestination,   the    Prayers  and 
Meditations,  the  Essay  on  Free  Will  and  the  Ctir  Deus  Homo, 
and  the  other,  the  great  sermons,  the  treatises  on  The  Nature 
of  Virtue,  The  End  of  God  in  Creation,  Original  Sin,  Justi- 
fication by  Faith,  The  Religious  Affections  and  The  Nature 


50 

of  the  Freedom  of  the  Will — I  think  that  Edwards  stands 
fully  abreast  of  the  mediaeval  philosopher  and  theologian.  Had 
Dante  known  Edwards  as  we  know  him,  he  would  have  given 
him  a  place  beside  Anselm  in  the  Heaven  of  the  Sun. 

In  saving  that  Edwards  is  like  Anselm,  1  have  also  in 
mind  the  fact  that  there  are  two  great  classes  of  Theologians. 
All  Christian  theology  rests  on  Holy  Scripture.  But  theo- 
logians strikingly  differ  among  themselves  in  the  importance 
they  respectively  assign  to  the  history  of  doctrine  and  the 
Church's  symbols  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  concord  between 
the  Word  of  God  and  the  reason  on  the  other.  In  the 
medieval  Church  there  were  school  divines  who  rested  solely 
on  history  and  authority  ;  who  had  no  confidence  in  the  argu- 
ment from  the  reason ;  who  did  not  believe  that  there  is  a 
theologia  naturalis.  This  tendency  was  strongest,  perhaps,  in 
the  Franciscan,  Duns  Scotus.  In  modern  Protestant  churches, 
the  tendency  is,  perhaps,  strongest  in  the  high  Anglican 
writers.  Now  while  Edwards  was  in  harmony  with  the  Re- 
formed Confessions,  the  absence  of  the  Confessional  or  his- 
toric_al  spirit  is  noticeable  in  all  his  theological  treatises.  The 
lack  of  it  is  explained  partly  by  his  training.  In  the  curricu- 
lum of  the  American  Colonial  College,  historical  studies  were 
slight  and  elementary,  while  studies  which  discipline  the  pow- 
ers were  pursued  with  a  vigor  and  sincerity  which  the  modern 
University  would  do  well  to  promote.  We  must  regret,  I 
think,  the  lack  in  this  great  American  theologian  of  large  his- 
torical culture  and,  by  consequence,  of  the  historical  spirit.  Be- 
cause of  it  there  is,  in  the  positiveness  of  his  assertions,  in  his 
strong  confidence  in  logical  analysis  and  dialectic  in  them- 
selves, and  in  his  historical  generalizations  in  The  History  of 
Redemption,  a  quality  which  it  is  right  to  call  provincial. 

But  if  he  is  defective  at  this  point,  it  is  not  too  much  to 
say,  that  he  is  one  of  the  greatest  Doctors  of  the  Universal 
Church  by  reason  of  his  singular  eminence  in  three  capital 
qualities.  In  the  first  place,  he  is  far  more  powerful  than  most 
theologians  in  his  appeal  to  the  reason  in  man.  I  mean  the 
reason  in  its  largest  sense  and  as  distinguished  from  the  under- 
standing. The  reason  itself,  he  held,  as  if  he  were  a  Cam- 
bridge Platonist,  has  a  large  spiritual  content.  If  I  imder- 
stand  him,  he  went  bevond  the  Westminster  Divines  in  the 


51 

value  he  put  upon  the  Light  of  Nature.  Of  his  actual  appeal 
to  the  reason,  including  under  that  term  the  conscience  and  the 
religious  nature,  I  have  time  only  to  say  that  it  permeates  and 
gives  distinction  to  his  entire  theological  product.  He  ad- 
dresses it  with  large  confidence  in  his  sermons,  in  his  essay  on 
The  End  of  God  in  Creation,  in  his  chapter  on  the  Satisfaction 
of  Christ  written  in  the  very  spirit  of  the  Cur  Deus  Homo,  in 
all  his  endeavors  to  ciuicken  in  reader  and  hearer  the  sense  of 
guilt  and  the  fear  of  its  punishment,  in  his  great  discourse  on 
Spiritual  Light,  and  in  his  great  volume  on  the  Religious  Af- 
fections. In  all  of  them  a  consummate  theologian  of  the 
reason  distinctly  appears.  To  this  we  must  add  his  supremacy 
in  the  related  gifts  of  clear  exposition,  subtle  distinction,  and 
acute  polemic.  To  this  supremacy  the  world  has  borne  abun- 
dant testimony.  If  he  is  like  Anselm  in  his  high  estimate  of 
the  reason,  he  is  like  Thomas  Aquinas  in  his  dialectical  acute- 
ness.  Nor  is  this  acuteness  mere  quickness  of  vision  and  alert- 
ness in  logical  fence.  His  two  greatest  polemic  works  are 
probably  the  essays  on  Original  Sin  and  The  Freedom  of  the 
IVill.  Both  of  them  are  profound  as  well  as  acute;  both  are 
large  in  their  conception  of  the  subject ;  and  in  both  he  is  fair 
to  his  antagonist,  and,  though  not  so  largely,  yet  as  really  con- 
structive as  he  is  polemic.  To  these  we  must  add,  finally,  a 
consummate  genius  for  theological  construction.  No  one  can 
go  through  his  collected  works  even  rapidly,  as  I  was  com- 
pelled to  do  this  summer^,  without  seeing  that  a  self-consistent 
World-view  or  theory  of  the  Universe  was  distinct  and  com- 
plete in  the  consciousness  of  Edwards,  and  that  it  is  the  living 
root  out  of  which  springs  every  one  of  his  sermons  and  dis- 
cussions. No  theological  writer  is  less  atomistic.  None  is 
less  the  prey  of  his  temporary  impulses  or  aberrations.  No 
theological  essays  less  merit  the  name  of  disjecta  nieuibra. 
The  joy  of  the  completed  literary  presentation  of  this  univer- 
sal system,  this  spiritual  and  intellectual  Cosmos,  was  denied 
him.  But  it  is  in  his  works,  just  as  completely  as  Coleridge's 
system  is  in  the  Biographia  Literaria  and  the  Table  Talk,  just 
as  clearly  as  Pascal's  Pyrrhonism  lies  open  to  us  in  his  frag- 
mentary Thoughts.  Had  he  lived  to  complete  at  Princeton 
his  History  of  Redemption,  his  "body  of  divinity  in  an  entire 
new  method,"  it  is  my  belief  that  the  world  would  have  seen 
in  it  the  fruit  of  a  constructive  genius  not  less  great  than  that 


52 

which  appears  in  the  SuiiDiui  of  St.  Thomas  or  in  the  Insti- 
tutcs  of  Calvin. 

Though  no  theologian  more  habitually  conceived  the 
spiritual  world  as  objective,  yet  his  great  powers  and  special 
talents  wrought  best,  and  he  produced  his  best  work,  when  he 
was  writing  on  the  religious  life.  That  life  he  knew  well,  be- 
cause of  his  own  profound  and  vivid  religious  experience.  But 
he  never  wrote  out  of  his  experience  alone.  The  Spiritual  uni- 
verse as  a  whole  is  before  him  as  he -writes.  It  is  always  there- 
fore the  ideal  religious  life  of  the  redeemed  sinner  he  is  de- 
scribing. Hence  its  severity,  its  purity,  its  deep  humility  as  it 
measures  itself  with  the  absolute  ethical  and  spiritual  perfec- 
tion. If  we  do  not  wish  tO'  sink  into  despair,  we  must  not  for- 
get this  as  we  read  the  greatest  of  his  tracts,  the  essay  on  The 
Religions  Affections. 

A  theologian,  so  profound  and  so  individual  as  Edwards 
was,  could  not  but  have  made  many  contributions  of  the  high- 
est importance  to  theological  science.  Now  whatever  Ed- 
wards' distinctive  contributions  to  theolog'y  were,  it  is  import- 
ant to  notice  that  they  were  contributions  to  the  historical 
theology  of  the  Christian  Church.  He  was  in  full  concord 
with  the  great  Ecumenical  Councils  on  the  Trinity  and  the 
Person  of  Christ.  He  thoroughly  accepted  the  formal  and 
material  principles  of  the  Reformation.  And  he  was  con- 
vinced of  the  truth  of  the  great  system  known  as  Calvinism, 
or  the  Reformed  Theology.  His  greatness  as  a  theologian 
and  his  fruitfulness  as  a  writer  are  rooted  in  the  consent  of 
his  heart,  as  well  as  the  assent  of  his  mind,  to  these  historical 
doctrines.  And  though,  as  I  have  said,  individually  he  was 
not  distinctively  informed  by  the  historical  spirit,  yet  he  is  in 
the  line  of  the  historical  succession  of  Christian  theologians. 

Turning  to  these  distinctive  contributions  I  have  time  to 
name  only  one;  but  that  one  has  been  of  immense  historical 
importance  in  America.  Jonathan  Edwards  changed  what  I 
may  call  the  centre  of  thought  in  American  theological  think- 
ing. There  were  great  theologians  in  New  England  before 
Edwards.  I  mention  only  John  Norton  of  Ipswich,  and  Sam- 
uel Willard  of  Harvard.  They  followed  the  Reformed  School 
Divines  not  only  in  making-  the  decree  of  God  the  constitutive 
doctrine  of  the  system,  but  in  emphasizing  it.     Edwards  did 


53 

not  displace  the  eternal  Decree  as  the  constitutive  doctrine; 
but  by  a  change  in  emphasis  he  lifted  into  the  place  of  first 
importance  in  theological  thinking  in  America  the  inward  state 
of  man  in  nature  and  in  grace.  He  appears  to  have  been  led 
strongl}-  to  emphasize  these  related  themes,  partly  by  the  Great 
Awakening,  and  partly  by  the  controversy  on  the  Half-way 
Covenant  which  followed  it.  No  one,  however,  but  a  man  of 
genius  could  have  made  this  change  in  emphasis  so  potent  a 
fact  in  American  Church  history.  It  is  impossible  to  exag- 
gerate the  influence  thus  exerted  by  Edwards  on  American 
theological  and  religious  discussions  and  on  American  relig- 
ious life.  If  I  may  so  say,  here  is  the  open  secret  of  the  New 
England  theology  from  Samuel  Hopkins  to  Horace  Bushnell. 
And  more  than  to  any  other  man,  to  .Edwards  is  due  the  im- 
portance which,  in  American  Christianity,  is  attributed  to  the 
conscious  experience  of  the  penitent  sinner,  as.  he  passes  into 
the  membership  of  the  Invisible  Church. 

Quite  as  important  as  this  distinctive  contribution  is  the 
tremendous  stimulus  and  impetus  he  gave  to  theological  spec- 
ulation and  construction.  When  I  think  of  the  Edwardean 
School  of  New  England  theologians  from  Samuel  Hopkins 
to  Edwards  Park,  between  whom  are  included  so  many  bril- 
liant men,  too  many  even  to  be  named  at  this  time,  when  I 
think  of  the  Edwardean  theologians  in  my  own  Church,  like 
Henry  Boynton  Smith  and  William  Greenough  Thayer  Shedd ; 
when  I  think  of  the  fruitful  history  of  his  works  in  Scotland 
and  England,  and  recall  his  real  mastery  over  the  minds  he 
influenced ;  it  seems  to  me  that  it  is  not  too  much  to  say  that, 
up  to  this  time,  his  influence  in  the  English-speaking  world — 
not  on  all  thinking,  but  on  distinctively  dogmatic  thinking — 
has  been  as  great  as  that  of  either  Joseph  Butler  or  Samuel 
Taylor  Coleridge. 

I  have  thus  endeavored  to  set  before  you  my  impressions 
of  Edwards'  dominating  quality,  his  intellectual  gifts,  and  the 
kind  of  work  he  did  ;  and  to  state  the  place  which  in  my  view 
he  holds  among  the  theologians  of  the  Universal  Church.  I 
have  refrained  from  eulogy.  He  is  too  consummate  and  sin> 
cere  a  master  for  us  to  approach  with  the  language  of  compli- 
ment. But  I  should  incompletely  perform  the  duty  you  have 
devolved  upon  me.  did  I   fail  to  speak  of  two  of  his  works 


which  have  been  violently  and  repeatedly  attacked.  C  )ne  is  the 
essay  on  The  Freedom  of  the  IVill.  The  other  is  the  Sermons 
oil  the  Punishment  of  the  Wicked. 

'  The  essay  on  the  Freedom  of  the  Will  is  essentially  a 
polemic,  and  only  incidentally  a  constructive  treatise.  As  a 
polemic,  therefore,  it  must  be  judged.  He  had  before  his 
mind,  not  the  whole  voluntary  nature  of  man  as  a  subject  to  be 
investigated,  but  the  special  Arminian  doctrine  of  the  lil)erty 
of  indifference  as  an  error  to  be  antagonized.  What,  there- 
fore, the  essay  shows  is,  not  his  constructive  ability,  but  his 
ability  as  an  antagonist.  I  have  read  carefully  only  one  other 
treatise  in  which  the  propositions  as  obviously  move  forward  in 
procession,  with  steps  as  firmly  locked  together.  This  other 
treatise  is  theEthics  of  Spinoza.  If  you  dare  consentingly  to 
follow  Spinoza  through  three  kinds  of  knowledge  up  to  his 
definition  of  substance — which,  since  it  is  thought  not  in  a 
higher  category  but  in  itself,  is  self-existent ;  which  is  and 
can  be  one  only ;  and  those  known  attributes  "perceived  to  be 
of  the  essence  of  this  substance"  are  infinite  thought  and  in- 
finite extension — if  you  follow  Spinoza  thus  far ;  you  will  soon 
find  yourself  imprisoned  in  a  universe  of  necessity,  and  bound 
in  it  by  a  chain  of  theorems,  corollaries  and  lemmas  impossi- 
ble to  be  broken  at  any  point.  Your  only  safety  is  in  obeying 
the  precept,  Obsta  priiieipiis.  Quite  equal  to  Spinoza's  is  Ed- 
wards' essay  in  its  close  procession  of  ordered  argument.  Like 
Spinoza  he  begins  his  treatise  with  definitions.  And  I  cannot 
see  how  anyone,  who  permits  himself  to  be  led  without  pro- 
test through  the  first  of  the  "Parts"  of  the  essay,  can  refuse  to 
go  on  with  him  at  any  point  in  the  remaining  three.  In  read- 
ing the  treatise  one  should,  above  all,  keep  in  view  the  fact 
that,  though  it  is  polemic  against  a  particular  theory,  it  was 
written  in  the  interest  of  a  positive  theological  doctrine.  I 
think  we  shall  do  justice  to  this  doctrine  if  we  state  it  in  terms 
like  the  following:  "Man's  permanent  inclination  in  sinful; 
and  his  sinful  inclination  will  certainly  qualify  his  moral 
choices."  This  Augustinian  doctrine  Edwards  defended  by  a 
closely  reasoned  psychology  of  the  will.  Now  I  am  not  sure 
that  this  great  doctrine,  which  I  heartily  accept,  was  at  all 
aided  by  Edwards  when  he  involved  it  with  and  defended  it  by 
a  particular  psychology.     And  my  doubt  is  deepened  by  what 


55 

seems  to  me  his  unnecessary  employment,  in  the  spiritual 
sphere,  of  terms  taken  from  the  sphere  of  nature,  like  "cause," 
"determination"  and  "necessity."  I  can  only  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  defense  of  the  religious  doctrine,  and 
not  his  psychology,  was  Edwards'  deepest  anxiety.  And  who 
of  us  is  not  prepared  to  say,  that  the  bad  man's  badness  is  a 
permanent  disposition  certain  to  emerge  in  his  ethical  volitions, 
and  that  to  revolutionize  it  there  is  needed  the  forth-putting 
of  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  ? 

But  it  is  Edwards'  sermons  on  llic  Punishment  of  flie 
Wicked  which  have  awakened  the  strongest  enmity ;  an  en- 
mitv  expressed  often  in  the  most  violent  terms.  The  rational 
and  Scriptural  basis  of  the  doctrine  and  the  objections  to  it 
need  not  be  set  forth  here.  Edwards  accepted,  defended  and 
proclaimed  it.  substantially  in  the  form  in  which  it  has  been 
taught  in  the  Greek,  the  Latin  and  the  protestant  Churches. 
It  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Fathers,  the  mediaeval  Schoolmen  and 
the  Protestant  theologians.  Edwards'  doctrine  of  Hell  is  ex- 
actly one  with  the  doctrine  of  Dante.  Now  it  is  of  interest  to 
note  that  there  is  a  widespread  revulsion  from  Edwards,  con- 
sidered as  the  author  of  these  Sermons,  which  does  not  and 
so  far  as  I  am  aware  never  did  appear  in  the  case  of  Dante, 
considered  as  the  author  of  the  Inferno.  What  is  the  explan- 
ation of  the  difference?  Dante  is  praised  and  glorified  by  not 
a  few  of  those  to  whom  the  name  of  Edwards  is  for  the  same 
reason  a  name  of  "execration  and  horror."  Indeed,  Dante  has 
been  defended  by  a  great  American  man  of  letters  for  rejoic- 
ing in  the  pain  of  the  damned  ;  while  no  one  of  Edwards"  ser- 
mons, unless  it  is  Sinners  in  the  Hands  of  an  Angry  God,  has 
been  more  severely  criticised  as  inhuman  than  the  discourse 
entitled,  The  Torments  of  the  Wicked  in  Hell  no  occasion  of 
Grief  to  the  Saints  in  Heaven.  We  shall  do  well,  therefore,  to 
note  the  contrast  between  Dante's  and  Edwards'  presentation 
of  the  same  subject. 

When  Dante  was  sailing  through  the  Lake  of  Mud  in  the 
Fifth  Circle  of  Hell,  there  appeared  before  him  suddenly 
Philippo  Argenti,  who  in  this  world  was  full  of  arrogance  and 
of  disdain  of  his  fellowmen,  now  clothed  only  with  the  lake's 
muck.  Pathetically  he  answers  Dante's  inc^uiry,  "Who  art 
thou  that  art  become  so  foul?"  with  the  words,  "Thou  seest  I 


56 

am  one  who  weeps."  And  Dante  replies,  "With  weeping  and 
with  waiHng,  accursed  spirit,  do  thou  remain,  for  I  know  thee 
ahhough  thou  art  all  filthy."  Then  Virgil  clasps  Dante's  neck 
and  kisses  his  face  and  says,  "Blessed  is  she  who  bore  thee !" 
And  Dante  replies,  "Master,  I  should  much  like  to  see  him 
ducked  in  this  broth  before  we  depart  from  the  lake."  And 
Virgil  promises  that  he  shall  be  satisfied.  "And  after  this", 
continues  Dante,  "I  saw  such  rending  of  him  by  the  muddy 
folk  that  I  still  praise  God  therefor  and  thank  Him  for  it.  All 
cried  'At  Philippo  Argenti !'  and  the  raging  Florentine  spirit 
turned  upon  himself  with  his  teeth.  Here  we  left  him ;  so  that 
1  tell  no  more  of  him."  This  is  one  of  the  passages  in  Dante's 
poem  of  that  Hell  over  whose  entrance  he  read  .these  words : 
"Through  me  is  the  way  into  eternal  woe ;  through  me  is  the 
way  among  the  lost  people.  Justice  moved  my  high  creator ; 
the  divine  Power,  the  supreme  Wisdom,  and  the  primal  Love 
made  me.  Before  me  were  no  things  created  unless  eternal, 
and  I  eternal  last.     Leave  every  hope,  ye  who  enter  here." 

There  is  nothing  in  Edwards  which,  so  far  as  I  can  judge, 
equals  this  in  its  horrid  imagery  and  suggestion.  And  yet 
men  enjoy  Dante  and  the  Inferno.  They  do  not  "execrate" 
him  for  a  "monster,"  as  Dr.  Allen  says  they  do  Edwards.  And 
in  his  great  essay  on  Dante,  Mr.  James  Russell  Lowell  makes 
this  very  scene  the  text  of  an  eloquent  laudation  of  Dante's 
moral  quality,  in  which  he  says  of  him ;  "He  believed  in  the 
righteous  use  of  anger,  and  that  baseness  was  its  legitimate 
quarry."  Why  is  it  that  the  attitude  of  the  general  public, 
thus  represented  by  Mr.  Lowell,  toward  the  Hell  of  Dante  is 
so  different  from  the  attitude  of  the  same  public  toward  the 
Hell  of  Edwards?  I  think  we  shall  find  an  answer  to  this 
question  in  what  I  may  call  Edwards'  spiritual  realism.  Of 
course  Dante  is  a  realist  also.  How  often  this  quality  of  his 
poem  has  been  pointed  out  to  us !  But  Dante's  is  the  realism 
of  the  artist,  the  poet  who  appeals  to  our  imagination.  Our 
imagination  being  gratified,  we  enjoy  the  picture  and  even  the 
sensations  of  horror  which  the  picture  starts.  Of  all  this  there 
is  nothing  in  Edwards.  There  is  no  picture  at  all.  There  is 
no  picture  at  all.  There  is  scarcely  a  symbol.  Here  and  there 
there  is  an  illustration.  But  the  illustrations  of  Edwards  are 
never  employed  to  make  his  subject  vivid  to  the  imagination. 


57 

They  are  intended  simply  to  explicate  it  to  the  understanding. 
The  free,  responsible,  guilty  and  immortal  spirit  is  immediately 
addressed ;  and  the  purely  spiritual  elements  of  the  Hell  of  the 
wicked,  separated  from  all  else,  are  made  to  appear  in  their 
terrible  nakedness  before  the  reason  and  the  conscience.  The 
reason  and  the  conscience  respond.  We  are  angry  because 
startled  out  of  our  security.  And  we  call  him  cruel,  because 
of  the  conviction  forced  on  us  that  we  are  in  the  presence  of 
a  terrible,  even  if  mysterious,  spiritual  reality.  Edwards  al- 
wavs  spoke,  not  to  the  imagination,  but  to  the  responsible 
spirit.  Men  realized  when  he  addressed  them  that  because  they 
are  sinners,  their  moral  constitution  judicially  inflicts  upon 
their  personality  remorse;  and  that  remorse  is  an  absolute, 
immitigable  and  purely  spiritual  pain,  independent  of  the  con- 
ditions of  time  and  space  and,  therefore,  eternal. 

The  Nineteenth  Century,  in  one  of  its  greatest  poets,* 
looking  out  on  nature,  sees  no  relief  from  this  eternity  of  re- 
morse ;  that  is  to  say,  it  sees  no  evidence,  in  nature's  "tooth 
and  claw"  that  God  will  ever  interfere  to  end  this  spiritual  pain 
and  punishment.  It  only  "hopes"  that,  "at  last,  far  off," 
"Winter  will  turn  to  Spring"-"  I  shall  not  attack  any  man  for 
a  hope,  maintained  against  the  evidence  of  remorse  within  and 
nature  without,  that  the  mystery  of  pain  and  moral  evil  will 
be  thus  dissipated  in  their  destruction.  It  is  not  my  business 
to  denounce  a  thoughtful  and  reverent  spirit  like  Tennyson, 
because  of  any  relief  he  may  individually  find,  when  facing 
the  most  terrible  revelation  of  nature  and  of  his  moral  consti- 
tution, in  the  "hope"  which  issues  from  our  sensibility  to  pain 
and  from  the  sentiment  of  mercy  which  God  has  implanted 
in  us  all.  But  I  do  say,  that  a  man's  private  "hope"  should 
never  be  elevated  to  the  dignity  of  a  dogma,  or  be  made  a  norm 
of  teaching,  or  he  proposed  as  a  rule  of  action.  And  I  do  pro- 
test that  it  is  the  height  of  literary  injustice,  while  praising 
Dante,  to  condemn  Edwards  the  preacher  because,  in  his  anx- 
iety to  induce  men  to  "press  into  the  kingdom,"  he  preached, 
not  the  private  hope  of  Lord  Tennyson,  but  the  spiritual  verity 
to  which  the  conscience  of  the  sinner  responds.  Thus,  in  his 
treatment  of  this  darkest  of  subjects,  that  spirituality  which 
I  have  said  was  his  dominant  quality  is  regnant;  and  here,  too, 

*Tu   Memoriam,  liii-lvi. 


58 


he  should  be  called,  "the  friend  and  aider  of  those  who  would 
live  in  the  spirit." 

With  this  protest  I  conclude.  Let  me  say  again,  that  I 
am  deeply  grateful  to  you  for  the  opportunity  you  have  given 
me  to  unite  with  you  in  this  commemoration  of  the  man  we  so 
often  call  our  greatest  American  Divine.  He  was  indeed  in- 
expressibly great  in  his  intellectual  endowment,  in  his  theo- 
logical achievement,  in  his  continuing  influence.  He  was  great- 
est in  his  attribute  of  regnant,  permeating,  irradiating  spirit- 
uality. It  is  at  once  a  present  beatitude  and  an  omen  of  fu- 
ture good  that,  in  these  days  of  pride  in  wealth  and  all  that 
wealth  means,  of  pride  in  the  fashion  of  this  world  which 
passeth  away,  we  still  in  our  heart  of  hearts  reserve  the  high- 
est honor  for  the  great  American  who  lived  and  moved  and 
had  his  being  in  the  Universe  which  is  unseen  and  eternal. 


Stockbridge  Street. 
Elm  planted  by  Timothy  Edwards  on  the  right. 


EDWARDS  AT  STOCKBRIDGE. 

By  Riov.  William  Edwards  Park,  D.D. 

Like  many  great  men  wliD  came  after  him  Mv.  Edwards 
went  West.  To  the  hamlet  then  called  Stockbridge,  a  little 
clearing  in  the  vast  forest,  along  a  wood  path  forty  miles  to 
the  westward  Edwards  wended  his  way.  The  land  for  this 
small  village  which  had  been  named  Stockbridge  from  the 
English  home  of  its  first  settlers,  had  been  purchased  from 
the  Housatonic  Indians  in  1722,  and  in  the  year  175 1  it  con- 
tained twelve  English  speaking  families  and  one  hundred  and 
fifty  families  of  Indians.  If  President  Edwards  on  his' arrival 
thither  looked  for  communications  with  other  men  and  larger 
places,  he  would  have  seen  toward  the  east  Northampton, 
which  had  lately  repudiated  him,  .with  Springfield,  Worcester 
and  Boston  lying  beyond.  Albany  was  then  practically  the 
western  frontier  of  the  Jinglish  settlements,  and  if  the  great 
sage  had  turned  his  eye  to  the  north,  he  would  have  seen  a  few 
families  in  Pittsfield,  beyond  which  stretched  an  unbroken 
wilderness.  When  he  remembered  the  goodly  population 
and  refined  culture  of  Northampton,  he  must  have  felt  that 


60 

his  situation  was  contracting,  but  he  had  really  reached  a 
great  expansion  and  did  not  know  it.  He  was  called  like 
Abraham  out  of  the  Chaidees  to  a  great  place.  From  an 
unpublished  manuscript  of  the  late  Prof.  E.  A.  Park,  D.  D.,  I 
quote  the  following  account  of  the  memorable  journey:  "The 
poet  John  Keets  wrote  for  his  own  epitaph,  'Here  lies  one 
whose  name  was  writ  in  water.'  "  Jonathan  Edwards  does  not 
appear  to  have  been  sadaened  by  the  injury  done  his  own 
name,  as  he  rode  over  the  rough  and  obscure  road  from  his 
home  settlement  on  the  edge  of  the  wildernss  to  his  new  set- 
tlement nearer  the  depth  of  the  wilderness.  Seldom  indeed 
has  a  man  lived  who  thought  so  little  of  his  name,  while  he 
v/as  entitled  to  have  it  written  on  a  monument  of  marble.  If 
a  picture  could  have  been  taken  of  him  as  he  was  travelling 
from  Northampton  to  Stockbridge,  it  would  have  been  the 
picture  of  a  man  touched  with  melancholy  in  view  of  incidents 
attending  his  pastorate.  Had  the  thrilling  scenes  of  the  "Great 
Awakening"  been  obliterated  from  the  memory  of  his  parish- 
ioners? Had  his  fervid  discourses  been  written  on  water  in- 
stead of  being  engraved  on  the  rock?  We  are  often  told  that 
the  human  heart  is  a  kind  of  photographic  plate,  retaining,  so 
to  speak,  the  impression  made  upon  it  by  the  light.  Did  the 
light  of  Edwards'  discourses  make  no  impression  upon  the 
hearts  of  his  parishioners?  Were  those  hearts  covered  with 
blurred  or  distorted  images?  We  may  suppose  him  to  have 
been  grieved  by  the  untoward  events  which  were  the  iiidiz'id- 
iial  sequences  rather  than  the  permanent  results  of  his  ministry. 
We  have  reason  to  suppose,  however,  that  although  he  may 
have  been  cast  down,  his  faith  was  not  destroyed,  that  he  re- 
tained a  strong  confidence  in  the  reality  of  religious  revivals, 
in  the  permanent  efficacy  of  Divine  truth,  when  preached  ac- 
cording to  the  Divine  plan  and  in  the  Divine  purpose,  to  over- 
ride all  the  ends  of  the  world  for  the  good  of  the  Church. 
On  his  pathway  through  the  woods  he  must  have  felt  the  mean- 
ing of  the  adage  that  "The  wolf  is  at  the  door."  He  must 
have  foreseen  not  only  the  continuance  of  the  povertv,  but  the 
addition  of  new  discomforts  when  his  invalid  wife  with  her 
young  children  should  take  up  her  abode  with  the  Indians,  and 
her  sons  and  daughters  should  enter  the  circle  of  uncongenial 
companions.  This  passage  to  his  Indian  settlement  afforded 
him  a  rich  opportunity  for  testing  the  influence  of  his  favorite 


61 


thoug-hts  upon  his  own  mind.  He  may  have  repeated  to  him- 
self the  following-  reflections  so  often  reiterated  in  different 
forms  throughout  his  published  and  unpublished  writings: 
"By  virtue  of  the  believers  union  with  Christ  he  doth  really 
possess  all  things.  I  mean  that  he  possesseth  God,  three  in 
one,  and  all  that  he  has.  and  all  that  he  does,  and  all  that  he 
has  made  or  done,  the  whole  universe,  bodies  and  spirits,  light. 
Heaven,  angels,  men  or  devils,  sun,  moon,  stars,  land  and  sea, 
fish  and  fowls,  all  the  silver  and  gold,  all  beings  and  perfec- 
tions, are  as  much  the  Christian's  as  the  money  in  his  pocket, 
the  clothes  he  wears  or  the  house  he  dwells  in,  or  the  victuals 
he  eats, 'yea,  more  advantageously  his,  than  if  he  commanded 
all  these  things  mentioned  to  be  just  in  all  respects  as  he 
pleased,  by  virtue  of  the  union  with  Christ,"  because  Christ, 
who  certainly  doth  possess  all  things,  is  entirely  his,  so  that  he 
possesses  it  all,  more  than  a  wife  the  property  of  the  best  and 
dearest  of  husbands.  All  the  universe  is  his,  only  he  has  not 
the  trouble  of  managing  it ;  but  Christ  to  whom  it  is  no  trouble 
to  manage,  manages  it  for  him,  a  thousand  times  as  much  to 
his  advantage  as  he  could  himself,  if  he  had  the  managing  of 
all  the  atoms  in  the  universe.  Did  Edwards  believe  in  the 
hour  of  his  great  trial  that  Jesus  Christ  was  managing  for  him, 
so  that  he  possessed  all  things? 

The  regrets  which  others  may  have  put  into  the  thought 
of  this  remarkable  man  may  have  never  entered  his  mind. 
Ihere  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  promptness  and  resolution  with 
which  he  acted.  He  certainly  met  the  emergency  with  tact, 
courage  and  quick  adaptation  to  new  conditions.  After  the 
dissolution  of  his  pastorate  at  Northampton  he  had  been  invit- 
ed by  the  "Commissioners  at  Boston  of  the  Society  for  Propa- 
gating the  Gospel  in  New  England  and  the  parts  Adjacent"  to 
become  the  missionary  for  the  remnant  of  the  once  powerful 
tribe  of  Housatonic  Indians,  then  located  in  Stockbridge.  This 
rather  humble  position  had  been  vacated  two  years  before  by 
the  death  of  the  Reverend  John  Sergeant.  Dr.  Samuel  Hop- 
kins then  settled  in  the  neighboring  town  of  Great  Barrington, 
was  offered  the  position,  but  declined  it  in  favor  of  Mr.  Ed- 
wards, Avhom  he  ardently  wished  to  bring  into  the  neighbor- 
hood. The  twelve  white  families  also  formed  the  nucleus  of 
a  little  church  which  called  Mr.    Edwards    to    its    pastorate. 


62 

From  the  church  and  the  mission  fund  the  great  thinker  re- 
ceived a  pittance  of  income  which  was  supplemented  by  the 
labors  of  his  wife  and  daughters,  who  made  fans  and  other 
articles,  which  were  sold  in  the  market  at  Boston.  The  new 
missionary  was  obliged  to  erect  for  himself  and  family  a  house 
such  as  few  of  us  would  wish  to  live  in,  but  which  in  that 
age  was  called  commodious.  He  was  compelled  to  defray 
the  cost  of  the  edifice  from  his  slender  purse  before  he  had  dis- 
posed of  his  Northampton  property.  We  fear  that  "the  wolf 
was  very  near  the  door."  In  August,  175 1,  Mr.  Edwards  was 
installed  as  pastor  of  the  little  church,  and  assumed  the  care 
of  the  Indian  mission.  Mr.  Timothy  Woodbridge  instructed 
the  Indian  children  faithfully  in  the  day  school  during  the 
week,  while  Edwards  preached  twice  a  week  to  the  whites  and 
twice  to  the  Indians.  Considering  the  elementary  character  of 
the  services  to  the  Indians  and  the  great  amount  of  sermon  ma- 
terial used  in  a  former  pastorate  and  available  in  a  new  church, 
the  duties  of  the 'new  minister  were  not  for  him  arduous.  But 
the  persecution  which  had  almost  crushed  him  at  Northampton 
followed  him  to  his  new  home,  led  on  by  a  member  of  the 
same  family  which  had  harassed  him  in  his  old  church.  The 
greedy  and  knavish  individual  referred  to  attempted  by  repre- 
sentation, specious  and  ingenious,  but  entirely  false,  to  oust 
the  missionary  from  his  position  that  he  might  secure  the  dis- 
tribution of  the  Indian  mission  fund  for  himself.  In  reading 
the  correspondence  between  Mr.  Edwards  and  the  ring  of 
would-be  Indian  thieves,  we  might  suppose  that  the  mission- 
ary was  dealing  with  a  modern  contractor  who  furnished  sup- 
plies to  the  Sioux  or  Modocs.  They  expected  to  outwit 
with  ease  the  metaphysical  speculator.  But  the  metaphysician, 
a  far  shrewder  and  more  practical  man  of  the  world  than  has 
ever  been  supposed,  handled  the  thieves  as  he  did  the  Armin- 
ians  in  controversy,  brought  to  light  their  long  series  of  lies, 
cut  off  all  outlet  of  escape,  and  forced  the  chief  conspirator  to 
cry  for  mercy  and  leave  the  town  for  the  general  good,  after 
he  had  failed  to  secure  it.  Freed  from  the  annoyances  of  these 
men,  although  the  contest  had  cost  him  much  time  and  troub- 
le, Edwards  addressed  himself  to  the  work  before  him. 

In  our  opinion  this  great  thinker  and  scholar  at  his  time 
of  life,  and  with  his  habits  of  thought  and  work  almost  unal- 


63 

terably  formed,  was  not  adapted  to  be  a  mere  missionary  to  the 
Indian.  He  did  his  task  faithfully,  but  the  work  did  not  draw 
out  his  strongest  faculties.  His  predecessor.  Sergeant,  by 
means  of  industry,  tact  and  good  judgment,  did  a  work  for 
the  savages  which  was  better  than  that  of  the  far  greater  man 
who  followed  him.  Neither  did  Edwards  seem  to  pursue  the 
work  with  all  the  enthusiasm  of  his  nature,  fie  gave  to  it  only 
a  part  of  his  great  personality.  He  never  learned  the  language 
of  the  Indians,  as  he  certainly  could  have  done,  and  as  Ser- 
geant and  Eliot  had  done  before  him,  but  addressed  them  reg- 
ularly through  an  interpreter  after  the  manner  of  Brainerd. 
Only  a  few  of  his  sermons  to  the  Indians  have  been  preserved. 
They  are  ingenious,  forcible  and  able,  but  abound  in  defini- 
tions too  precise  and  distinctions  rather  too  subtle  for  the  mind 
of  the  savage,  although  the  preacher  may  occasionally  have 
had  the  Mohawk  chief,  *Hendricks,  in  his  congregation. 

Half  unconsciously  to  himself,  without  forming  any  spec- 
ial design,  Edwards  was  led  on  to  the  work  in  order  to  do 
which  he  had  been  taken  from  the  large  place  and  set  down  in 
the  small  one.  He  was  to  put  in  shape  for  the  use  of  posterity, 
all  the  accumulated  treasures  of  his  mind.  Had  he  not  been 
sent  to  his  little  forest  church,  he  would  have  left  us  fragment- 
ary ideas,  and  the  beginnings  of  many  treatises  not  one  of 
which  he  could  have  finished.  As  Thucidides  was  banished 
from  Athens,  and  left  his  petty  occupations  there  that  he  might 
write  his  history  of  the  Peloponesian  war,  which  is  the  great 
master-piece  of  the  historians'  art,  as  Dante  was  taken  out  of 
the  intrigues  and  petty  squabbles  of  the  Florentine  Republic, 
that  he  might  give  to  the  world  the  Divine  Comcdia,  so  Ed- 
wards was  taken  from  his  work  at  Northampton,  which  he  had 
practically  finished,  that  in  rural  seclusion  he  might  lay  foun- 
dations and  build  towers  for  the  construction  of  a  new  theo- 
logical literature. 

At  a  time  when  he  was  recovering  from  a  protracted 
sickness,  and  was  busy  in  destroying  the  vermin  who  wanted 
to  nibble  at  the  Indian  School  Fund,  he  planned  and  completed 
his  immortal  work  on  The  Freedom  of  the  Will.     Tradition 

*Note: — Hendricks  lived  at  this  time  in  the  Mohawk  valley, 
but  had  a  grandson  in  the  Stockbridge  School  where  he  occasion- 
ally visited. 


64 

affirms  that  in  the  httle  closet,  seven  feet  by  three  and  a  half, 
which  he  supposed  to  be  a  study,  he  wrote  the  work  in  the 
forenoons  of  four  and  a  half  months,  much  less  time 
than  an  ordinary  man  would  need  in  order  to  understand 
it !  This  rapidity  of  composition  is,  in  one  sense  marvelous, 
in  another  sense  easy  and  natural  for  the  author.  In  produc- 
ing so  profound  a  book  in  such  a  brief  time  Edwards  embodied 
the  results  of  forty  years'  study.  The  work  may  be  compared 
to  Daniel  Webster's  speech  on  Foote's  Resolution,  with  the 
materials  collected  during  twenty-five  years  experience,  but 
put  together  in  a  day  and  night.  The  book  contains  some  er- 
rors in  Biblical  interpretation,  neither  does  the  author  always 
adhere  closely  to  his  definitions,  but  he  succeeds  in  proving 
that  the  human  choice  pla3''s  within  the  circumference  of  a  vast 
decree,  just  as  passengers  on  an  ocean  steamer  are  free  to 
move  around  all  parts  of  the  ship  while  the  ship  carries  them 
with  its  own  motion  over  which  they  have  no  control. 

The  work  on  The  Freedom  of  the  Will  had  a  natural  con- 
nection with  that  upon  Original  Sin,  and  the  second  book  may 
be  considered  to  be  explanatory  of  the  first.  On  the  whole  we 
consider  this  to  be  the  most  able,  but  least  fortunate  of  Ed- 
wards' great  treatises.  Who  is  there  who  can  examine  the 
Origin  of  Sin,  look  down  into  that  bottomless  pit,  and  keep  a 
steady  head?  Yet  considering  that  the  subject  lies  almost 
outside  the  range  of  the  human  faculties,  the  work  of  Ed- 
wards is  a  master-piece.  It  seemed  at  one  time  as  though  the 
great  reasoner's  course  of  argument  would  compel  him  to  ad- 
mit that  God  was  the  author  of  sin,  a  conclusion  which  was 
abhorrent  to  his  reverential  nature.  Driven  toward  a  shore 
upon  which  he  is  determined  not  to  land,  the  argument  of  Ed- 
wards becomes  somewhat  obscure  and  evasive.  The  celebrat- 
ed Dr.  Emmons  declared  that:  "President  Edwards'  work  on 
Original  Sin  is  a  great  floundering  in  the  mire,  but  it  takes  a 
great  horse  to  make  such  a  great  floundering." 

There  is  extant  an  interesting  letter  from  Dr.  Samuel 
Hopkins,  who  afterwards  bec&me  the  noted  pastor  of  Newport, 
•R.  I.,  but  who  was  at  this  time  the  minister  of  a  little  church 
in  Great  Barrington,  adjacent  to  Stockbridge,  and  was 
therefore  Edwards'  nearest  clerical  neighbor.  The  letter  is 
dated  September  4,   1754,  addressed  to  the  Reverend  Joseph 


65 

Bellamy,  and  contains  the  following  sentences,  among  others : 
"1  visited  Mr.  Edwards  at  his  home  in  Stockbridge.  He  has 
fever  and  ague,  and  suffers  a  fit  every  day.  He  mourned  be- 
cause he  was  laid  aside  from  doing  God's  work,  and  feared 
that  his  church  and  mission  would  be  depleted  during  the  time 
of  his  illness.  On  the  following  Lord's  day  afternoon,  I  was 
beginning  the  service  in  my  own  church  and  while  1  was  read- 
ing the  Psalm,  news  came  that  Stockbridge  was  beset  by  an 
army  of  Indians  and  the  town  set  on  fire.  The  congregation 
was  scattered  in  a  twinkling.  In  the  course  of  two  hours  a 
troop,  of  people  rushed  from  Stockbridge  into  Barrington.  It 
turned  out  that  two  men  and  one  woman  had  been  killed,  but 
only  two  Indians  were  seen  near  Stockbridge.  It  was  rather 
a  false  alarm.  The  troops  afterwards  came  to  our  assistance. 
They  have  seen  Stockbridge,  eaten  up  all  our  provisions  and 
gone.  The  sight  of  two  Indians  cost  the  colony  about  tweaity 
thousand  pounds."  In  a  letter  of  President  Edwards  to  a 
friend,  referring  probably  to  the  same  transaction  he  says : 
"During  the  recent  outbreak  eighteen  soldiers  were  quartered 
at  my  house.  They  filled  our  spare  rooms,  and  some  of  them 
had  to  sleep  in  the  barn  and  outhouses."  Soon  afterwards  he 
sends  to  the  General  yVssembly  of  Massachusetts  the  following 
statement  of  account:  "My  family  furnished  to  the  soldiers 
eight  hundred  meals  of  victuals.  I  have  kept  horses  amounting 
to  pasturing  one  hundred  and  fifty  horses  for  twenty-four 
hours,  and  have  expended  seven  gallons  and  a  quart  of  West 
India  rum.  Two  Indians  put  the  colony  to  fifty  thousand 
pounds  charge,  and  never  exposed  themselves.  A  fort  was 
built  near  my  house.  We  gave  the  laborers  one  hundred  and 
eighty  meals  of  victuals.  They  used  up  fifteen  rods  of  new  log 
fence,  which  had  cost  me  two  shillings  a  rod.  I  make  no 
charge  for  entertaining  poor  people,  who  have  been  driven 
from  their  settlements  by  fear  of  the  enemy,  but  I  think  I 
might  be  paid  for  maintaining  troops  and  laborers  in  the  em- 
ploy of  the  province."  The  General  Court  of  Massachusetts 
allowed  him   eighteen   pounds. 

While  worn  out  with  his  unintermitted  thirteen  hours 
daily  of  study,  harassed  by  mean  and  intriguing  men,  who  la- 
bored to  oust  him  from  his  position  that  they  might  secure 
control  of  the  Indian  mission  fund,  afterwards  sick  with  fever 


66 

and  ague,  with  his  church  services  interrupted  by  Indian  raids, 
with  his  house  overrun  with  provisional  troops,  while  his  wife 
and  daughters  were  obliged  to  make  fans  and  other  articles 
to  eke  out  the  scanty  income  of  the  family,  himself  obliged  to 
write  his  sermons  in  a  fine  hand  in  order  to  economize  in  paper 
and  make  the  note  books  for  the  material  of  his  immortal  dis- 
courses on  the  blank  sides  of  old  church  notices,  and  the  dis- 
carded patterns  of  fans  and  ladies  caps,  especially  the  note 
book  consisting  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  pattern  sheets  cut 
in  the  shape  of  a  half  moon,  and  carefully  sewed  together,  Ed- 
wards sat  down  in  his  closet  of  three  and  a  half  feet  by  seven, 
to  write  his  treatise  on  The  Last  End  of  God  in  the  Creation 
of  the  World.  How  he  could  have  collected  his  thoughts  for 
such  a  theme  while  distracted  with  sickness,  "wars  and  rumors 
of  wars,"  struggles  to  maintain  his  position,  and  struggles  to 
support  his  large  family  upon  the  scanty  income  which  the  po- 
sition afforded,  we  cannot  imagine.  But  the  work  appeared 
and  seemed  to  perpetuate  the  ideas  of  the  mystic  thinkers  of 
the  Middle  Ages,  while  it  closed  the  author's  long  continued 
controversy  with  the  Arminians.  He  projected  a  work  on  the 
Mystery  of  the  Trinity  from  which  we  quote  a  few  exquisite 
sentences  showing  the  beautiful  objects  in  nature  which  he  had 
seen  during  his  rides  and  walks  about  Stockbridge.  In  speak- 
ing of  the  subtle  emanations  of  the  Deity  he  says :  "The  Son 
of  God  created  the  world  for  the  very  end  to  communicate 
himself  in  an  image  of  his  own"  excellency.  The  beauties  of 
nature  are  really  emanations  or  shadows  of  the  excellency  of 
God.  So  that  when  we  are  delighted  with  flowers,  meaddws 
and  gentle  breezes  of  wind,  we  may  consider  that  we  see  only 
the  emanations  of  the  sweet  benevolence  of  Christ.  The  green 
trees  and  fields  and  the  singing  of  birds  are  emanations  of  his 
purity.  The  easiness  and  naturalness  of  trees  and  vines  are 
shadows  of  this  beauty  and  loveliness.  The  crystal  rivers  and 
murmuring  streams  are  the  footsteps  of  his  favor,  grace  and 
beauty.  When  we  behold  the  light  and  brightness  of  the  sun,  the 
golden  edge  of  the  evening  cloud,  we  behold  the  adumbrations 
of  his  glory  and  goodness ;  and  in  the  blue  sky  of  his  mildness 
and  gentleness.  The  beauteous  light  is  a  lively  shadow  of  his 
spotless  holiness  and  a  happiness  and  delight  in  communicating 
himself.  This  is  the  reason  why  Christ  is  compared  to  these 
things  and  called  by  their  names.     The  Sun  of  Righteousness. 


67 

the  morning  star,  the  rose  of  Sharon,  the  lily  of  the  valley, 
the  apple  tree  among  the  trees  of  the  wood,  a  bundle  of  myrrh, 
a  roe  or  a  young  hart.  We  see  the  most  proper  image  of  the 
beauty  of  Christ  when  we  see  beauty  in  the  human  soul."  Af- 
ter tliis  beautiful  composition  was  finished,  the  indefatigable 
thinker  drew  up  a  scheme  for:  "The  History  of  Redemption 
being  a  Bodv  of  Divinity  in  the  form  of  a  History."  His 
plan  was  to  illustrate  every  doctrine  of  theology  by  the  records 
of  God's  dealings  with  mankind  in  history.  But  he  lacked 
the'  historical  education  needed  for  such  a  treatise,  and  for 
many  reasons  the  project  was  impracticable.-  The  historic 
theologians  of  the  future  must  complete  the  work,  the  plan 
only  remains  to  attest  the  vastness  of  Edwards'  mind.  With 
the' writing  of  the  "Notes  on  the  History  of  Redemption,"  the 
career  of  Edwards  at  Stockbridge  practically  ends.  The  call 
to  the  presidency  of  Princeton  College,  the  brilliant  opening 
of  his  administration  and  his  sad  and  sudden  death  on  the 
threshold  of  his  work,  must  be  described  by  others.  The  tra- 
dition is,  that  when  the  Council  decided  to  advise  the  renowned 
thinker  to  leave  his  little  church  and  assume  his  great  and 
new  office,  Edwards  burst  into  tears.  The  educational  inter- 
ests of  the  nation  called  him  to  go  forward,  but  his  heart  re- 
mained with  his  Indians  and  his  schemes  of  authorship. 

We  like  to  connect  the  evolution  of  the  world's  history 
with  certain  spots.  There  have  been  during  the  centuries 
centres  of  political  activity  and  centres  of  the  world's  thought. 
In  ancient  days  the  religious  opinion  of  the  world  was  mould- 
ed at  Jerusalem  and  her  aesthetic  taste  was  formed  at  Athens. 
In  modern  times  the  ideas  of  the  world  have  been  generated 
at  the  Sorbonne  of  Paris ;  the  Church  of  St.  Frydeswide  at  Ox- 
iord ;  the  universities  of  Harvard  and  Yale.  Neither  is  it  fitting 
to  conclude  without  a  reference  to  the  little  closet  study  at 
Stockbridge  in  which  lived  and  toiled  the  man  who  made  the 
doctrines  of  John  Locke  old  fashioned,  proved  liimself  to  be 
the  peer  of  Leibnitz  and  Descartes,  and  made  his  little  forest 
church  the  focal  centre  of  the  religious  thought  of  the  seven- 
teenth centurv. 


EDWAiiDS'  Library  Table. -Conch  Shei.t,  Used  in  Calling  the  Peopi.b 
•  TO  Meeting.— Communion  Tankard. 


MuKAL  Tablet  in  the  Stockbbidge  Church. 


PAMPHLET  BINDEi 

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Stockton,  Colit, 


DATE  DUE 


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PRINTED  IN  U.S.A. 


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1    1012  01039  1896 


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